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Book 






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COPYRIGHT DEPOSE 



PEOBLEMS OF 
MODEKN DEMOCKACY 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

Reflections and Comments. 1865-1S95. 
12mo, $2.00. 



PROBLEMS OF 
MODERN DEMOCRACY 



POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC 

ESSAYS 



BY 

EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 






NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1896 



%\ 






V 



CoPYMGHT, 1896, BY 

CHARLES SCR1BNERS SONS 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

HEW YORK 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Aristocratic Opinions of Democracy, .... 1 

[North American Review, January, 1865.] 

Popular Government, Q8 

[Nineteenth Century, February, 1886.] 

Some Political and Social Aspects of the Tariff, . 98 

[New Princeton Review, March, 1887.] 

Criminal Politics, 123 

[North American Review, June, 1890.] 

" The Economic Man," 156 

[North American Review, October, 1891.] 

Idleness and Immorality, 180 

[Forum, May, 1892.] 

The Duty of Educated Men in a Democracy, . . 199 
[Forum, March, 1894.] 

Who will Pay the Bills of Socialism ? 225 

[Forum, June, 1894.] 

The Political Situation in 1896, 249 

[Forum, May, 1896.] 

The Real Problems of Democracy, .... 275 

[Atlantic Monthly, July, 1896.] 

The Expenditure of Rich Men, 311 

[Scribner's Magazine, October, 1896.] 



AEISTOCEATIC OPINIONS OF 
DEMOCKACY 

The controversy between the supporters of oli- 
garchy and those of democracy, which has raged 
with greater or less heat ever since the middle of 
the last century, has drawn fresh vigor from the 
spectacle of the American war. Both sides have 
found in this great struggle, not only, to use the 
pulpit phrase, " an occasion to improve," but an 
endless supply of illustrations for the enforcement 
or elevation of their respective theories. The one 
sees, both in the causes of the struggle and in the 
manner in which it has been conducted, a series 
of conclusive proofs of the failure of popular gov- 
ernment ; the other finds in the incidents of each 
hour some new justification of its confidence in 
popular fortitude, honesty, and sagacity. 

And the discussion has been exacerbated by the 
fact, that neither party has been a disinterested 
spectator of the contest. By the friends of de- 
mocracy abroad, the convulsion through which the 
American commonwealth is passing is felt to be a 



3 POLITICAL AXD EC0N01TIC ESSAYS 

crucial test of the soundness of those political 
opinions of which they have long been the cham- 
pions, and with which their political fortunes are 
inseparably linked. To its friends in America it 
has come home as a personal calamity. It has 
either wasted their substance, or made their hearths 
desolate, or, which is often as hard to bear as 
either, it has inflicted lasting wounds on their 
pride. In the eyes of the party of aristocracy, too, 
it is not simply the political unity of the North 
American continent which is debated on Southern 
battle-fields, but the stability of their own order, 
the continuance of that form of social organization 
in which they have been bred, and with the se- 
curity and perpetuation of which all that they hold 
precious in life is indissolubly connected. To them 
the defeat of the South signifies the triumph of 
that "principle of equality" from the spread of 
which they look not only for their own degrada- 
tion, but, often honestly enough, for great danger 
to national liberty, and even to civilization itself. 
And to appreciate thoroughly the intensity of 
the interest which this conflict of ours excites, we 
must keep in mind the width of the area over 
which its material consequences have been felt. 
There is no shore so distant that the waves of this 
great tempest have not broken on it. The term 
orbis t err arum perturbatio, which, as applied by 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 3 

Cicero to the great civil war of his day, was but a 
rhetorical exaggeration, may be bestowed on this 
one with literal accuracy. The course of the great 
tides of commerce has been turned by it ; the in- 
dustry of whole nations has been revolutionized by 
it. From John O'Groat's to the base of the Great 
Snowy Range, there is no country to which its 
probable results, and probable duration, are not 
questions of tremendous moment. 

One result, for which students of political phi- 
losophy will be thankful, has flowed from the in- 
creased sharpness which the events of the day 
have lent to the discussion, and that is the clear- 
ness and frankness with which the opposing par- 
ties have been led to enunciate their views. We 
doubt if the enemies of democracy ever before re- 
vealed their objections to it, and their anticipations 
as to its effects, with as much candor as since our 
war broke out. "We now know, with a tolerable 
approach to exactness, what we did not know be- 
fore, the kind of thing they believe it to be, and 
the kind and amount of evil they expect to pro- 
ceed from its unchecked working. Excitement 
caused by the vicissitudes of the armed struggle 
has loosened the tongues of a great many men 
who were previously kept silent by caution or in- 
dolence, or from never having taken the trouble to 
put their conclusions into shape. When democ- 



4 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

racy was prosperous, many only shook their heads 
when it was mentioned who now make a clean 
breast of it, and tell the world in good set phrases 
what they have been thinking about it for years. 

And, on the other hand, its friends have been 
roused by the same causes into more vigorous 
defence of it than they ever ventured on before. 
There are many persons in America to-day who 
five years ago looked grave over universal suffrage, 
or expressed private doubts of its success, but who 
are now to be found in the ranks of its most 
enthusiastic defenders, breathing defiance of aris- 
tocrats and aristocracy from every pore, and con- 
signing every form of political organization in which 
power does not flow directly from the people, in 
yearly or biennial driblets, to unutterable failure 
and confusion. 

There has, however, in our opinion, been one 
great mistake made by some advocates of the dem- 
ocratic cause in their manner of conducting the 
controversy. It consists in ascribing all the at- 
tacks which have been recently made on demo- 
cratic institutions to aristocratic malignity, to a 
blind, perverse pride of caste, or to stupid, over- 
reasoning prejudice against our political and social 
organization simply because it is different from 
something else. There is no doubt, in England 
especially, a vast amount of ignorant depreciation 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 5 

of democracy by persons who have no better rea- 
sons for objecting to it than a vague notion that 
it is vulgar, and a vast deal by others who hate it 
from the purely selfish consideration of the proba- 
ble effect of its spread on their own social position 
or that of their families, or from the apprehension 
that it would introduce changes in manners which 
their temperament and education lead them to re- 
gard as obnoxious. 

But, in addition to these, democracy has had in 
this controversy a number of opponents — a small 
number, we admit — against whom we must em- 
ploy better weapons than railing, whose character 
and arguments are both unquestionably respecta- 
ble, and whose hostility to it is based on con- 
clusions carefully formed, which are enunciated, 
not certainly without feeling, but without rancor 
or irritation. They are thinkers who look on 
politics — ours as well as their own — in the clear 
white light of reason, and who, while differing 
from us as to the means of promoting it, share 
all our solicitude for the welfare of the human 
race. Nobody who has been familiar with the 
political literature of Europe for some years back, 
can have failed to perceive the struggle between 
their hopes and fears which shows itself whenever 
these men speak of democracy, the ill-disguised 
apprehension with which they concede that its 



6 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

march is now irresistible, and the nervous industry 
with which they occupy themselves in providing 
breaks and buffers to restrain or direct its course. 

The opinions of this class of persons about de- 
mocracy may, we think, be fairly summed up as 
follows. They think the spread of democracy 
(meaning thereby the ascendancy of " the principle 
of equality," to use M. de Tocqueville's phrase, 
both in politics and in society) over every Chris- 
tian country, at least, to be certain at no very dis- 
tant day. They believe that no precaution can be 
taken and no barrier created which will do 
more than postpone this result, and then for a 
very brief period. They think that this seems to 
be the remedy decreed by Providence for the re- 
moval of the great blot on our civilization, the 
physical miseiy and moral degradation of the lower 
classes. And they admit that the establishment of 
democracy, whether it take the shape of a republic 
or of a Cesarean despotism, would doubtless be 
largely instrumental in securing for the bulk of the 
population a certain amount of coarse enjoyments, 
such as good shelter, good food, and good clothing, 
and a limited amount of education. But they hold 
that every democracy, however free at the period 
of its establishment, gravitates strongly toward 
subjection to a single absolute ruler, after a period 
of great corruption and disorder, and that it derives 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 7 

this tendency from certain inherent defects ; and 
what these defects are, they fancy they are able to 
point out by an examination of what they see, or 
think they see, in the United States. 

What they believe they learn about democracy 
from what they see here is, that it is fatal in the 
long run to any high degree of excellence in the 
arts, science, literature, or statesmanship ; that it is 
hostile to every form of distinction, and thus tends 
to extinguish the nobler kinds of ambition, to 
create and perpetuate mediocrity, to offer a serious 
bar to progress, and even to threaten civilization 
with stagnation ; that, by making equality of con- 
ditions the highest political good, it makes civil 
liberty appear valuable only so long or so far as 
its existence is compatible with equality ; that it 
converts the ideal of the worst trained and most 
unthinking portion of the community into the na- 
tional standard of capacity, and thus drives the 
ablest men out of public life ; that it sets up mere 
success in the accumulation of money as the proof 
and test of national prosperity, and elevates ma- 
terial luxury into the great end of social progress ; 
that it takes from manners all their grace and pol- 
ish and dignity, makes literature feeble and tawdry, 
and oratory bombastic and violent ; that it infuses 
bitterness into party struggles, while removing the 
barriers which in aristocratic societies soften and 



5 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

restrain its expression ; and, finally, that, b y the 
pains it takes to preserve the equality of condi- 
tions, it forces every member of the community to 
engage as soon as he reaches manhood in an eager 
scramble for wealth, thus rendering impossible the 
existence of a class with sufficient leisure to devote 
themselves to the cultivation of the arts and 
sciences, or to speculative inquiry in any field of 
knowledge. 

We do not mean to say that all of the foregoing 
charges are brought against democracy by any one 
of its enemies, but the whole of them may be 
found in a very small number of the speeches, 
articles, and treatises of one sort or other, which 
the political movements of the last fifteen years 
have called forth both in England and on the 
Continent ; and it will be confessed by any candid 
American observer, that there are various phe- 
nomena, both social and political, to be witnessed 
in the United States which do give color to a large 
proportion of them. There is hardly one of them 
for which some foundation, or something like 
foundation, may not be found in some phase or 
other of American society or government. 

If we asked an American of conservative tastes 
and opinions to say frankly what he thought of 
this picture, he would probably take exception to 
a very large portion of it ; he would accuse it of 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 9 

gross exaggeration at least ; and if asked to sketch 
the changes for the worse which, in his opinion, 
had taken place in American society within the 
last fifty or sixty years, he would present us with 
something different, but different rather in degree 
than in kind. He would say that there had been 
since the beginning of the century a great deteri- 
oration in the character, attainments, and social 
standing of the men sent by the Free States to fill 
the various offices of government. (For the pur- 
pose of this discussion, we leave the Slave States 
out of the argument, and for obvious reasons.) 
The men who now occupy the judicial bench, fill 
the national and State legislatures, and sit at the 
council boards and in the mayoral chairs of the 
great cities, are inferior in training, ability, edu- 
cation, and social position to those who filled the 
same positions fifty or sixty years ago. Forensic 
eloquence has, he would say, consequently under- 
gone a corresponding change for the worse. It is 
neither so chaste, so simple, nor so forcible as it 
was at the time of the foundation of the govern- 
ment, and for many years after. The art of debat- 
ing has all but died out, for it is an art which 
needs acute and ready intellect, saturated with 
reading and experience and trained in fence, to 
sustain it. Speeches in Congress and in the legis- 
latures on important questions are now, for the 



10 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

most part, long essays, written out previously, 
often full of irrelevancy and commonplace, and re- 
peated altogether, or in a great degree, from mem- 
ory, to inattentive audiences. If the orator is 
forced by circumstances to depart from his pre- 
pared course, and defend himself and his opinions 
extemporaneously against an extemporaneous at- 
tack, his scanty mental resources force him in the 
great majority of cases to fall back on personal 
vituperation. And the small amount of previous 
thought or culture which is revealed in the legis- 
lative discussions is, he would add, very remark- 
able. Hardly any subject seems important enough 
or exciting enough to call out anything much bet- 
ter than the philosophy of hotel parlors or the 
logic of newspaper articles. What is worse than 
all this, legislation is confessedly more hasty, 
more reckless, and more ill-digested than formerly. 
None of these things can be ascribed to any dimi- 
nution in the number of men of culture and 
ability produced by the country in our day as 
compared with a former one. Their number bears, 
there is little doubt, a very much larger proportion 
to the population than it ever did. But they are 
unceremoniously thrust aside from public life, and 
are generally found either toiling in commerce or 
in the professions, or else killing time and ambi- 
tion in social trifling or in foreign travel. 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 11 

Of the present as compared with the former 
condition of the bar, too, he would say, that not 
only has etiquette disappeared from it, but in a 
large number of the States the relations of judge 
and counsel are marked by a familiarity which, on 
one side at least, is mingled with a good deal of 
contempt. Admission to the profession has come 
to be, not a proof of fitness, but a political right ; 
and the result is, that its ranks are crowded by 
needy aspirants, not after forensic distinction, but 
after money, whose want of learning and prepara- 
tion for their duties, and entire exemption from 
the once powerful restraints of professional opin- 
ion, are fast destroying the reputation for lore, 
ability, and integrity which a former generation 
achieved for the American bar. 

If you direct his attention to the social condi- 
tion of the country, he will tell you that, while 
the habits of the American population are much 
more luxurious than they were half a century 
ago, while there is far more money in circulation, 
and while most of the pleasures of life are placed 
within the reach of a much larger class than in the 
earlier days of the Eepublic, the manners are not 
only less ceremonious, but less dignified and re- 
fined ; that there is not only less punctiliousness, 
but less courtesy and grace in social intercourse ; 
that the family bond is not so strong as it used to 



12 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS 

be ; that there is less respect for authority, not 
only in the household, but in the state ; that both 
the father and the judge find themselves much 
less important and less respected personages than 
they once were ; that dress and manners have less 
weight and importance than formerly, and that 
there has grown up within thirty years a sort of 
affectation of carelessness in attire, in demeanor, 
and even in language ; that the English of the 
bulk of the population is not so pure, nor their 
accent so refined, as those of the fathers ; that 
more is now read, but less is digested, than in the 
last generation ; and that in short, on the whole, 
there is both in externals and in mental charac- 
teristics less finish to be found amongst Americans 
of the present day than amongst those of half a 
century ago. 

It matters not for our present purpose which of 
these pictures of American society is the more 
faithful. We are content to accept either of them 
as true, since the explanation which we propose to 
offer for the phenomena which they bring before 
us will, if it be of any value whatever, be as appli- 
cable to the first as to the last. But the moment 
we address inquiries as to the cause of these phe- 
nomena to any of the political sects of the present 
day, who are fairly entitled to the credit of either ob- 
serving or thinking, we find ourselves launched on 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 13 

a sea of contradiction. If we apply to a " conser- 
vative," he will, if advanced in years, probably 
acknowledge the occurrence of the changes we 
have enumerated above, and will, in nine cases 
out of ten, assure us that it is foreign immigration 
that has done it all ; that, if no Irish or Germans 
had ever come to the country, no changes for the 
worse, either in government or society, would ever 
have taken place. If we ask an Englishman of 
any but the radical school, or any of those native 
political philosophers who import their opinions 
with their gloves and pomatum, and study science 
in Sir Archibald Alison and the Quarterly Bevieiv y 
they will tell us that whatever of decay or dete- 
rioration is visible in anything American is the 
direct and palpable consequence of universal suf- 
frage ; that democracy has ruined the country, and 
that the only road to improvement lies through 
revolution. 

When we come to inquire to what extent the 
social or political condition of the Northern States 
has been influenced or modified by foreign immi- 
gration, we find ourselves dealing with a subject 
on which all those writers whose opinions are 
largely affected by their taste are agreed; and 
most of those who in America venture on political 
speculation belong to this class. If we take up 
the hundred laments over the degeneracy of our 



14 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

political condition, which issue from them every 
year in books, newspapers, speeches, and sermons, 
we shall find that in nine cases out of ten it is 
ascribed to the great influx of ignorant foreigners 
which has been going on for the last thirty years. 
In many, perhaps most, of the controversies which 
are carried on with European critics touching the 
state and prospects of the republic, this argument 
is put very prominently forward. Any coarseness, 
corruption, or recklessness, either of conduct or 
language, which shows itself in the management 
of our public affairs, and attracts the attention of 
foreign critics, is apt to be ascribed by the native 
advocate to the malign influence of the human 
drift, which the convulsions and misfortunes of 
European society have cast on our shores. 

We suspect that much of the prevalence of this 
theory is due to the fact, that those who most fre- 
quently put it forward in print live in the great 
cities, where foreigners are most numerous, where 
they are in the habit of acting in masses, and where 
their influence is most easily seen and felt. It 
is there that the evils which flow from their pres- 
ence are most palpable ; and those who have un- 
der their eyes its effects on the local government 
are apt to draw from the spectacle the most lugu- 
brious inferences as to the condition of the rest 
of the country. But the estimate of the weight 



ARTS TO CRA TIC OPINIONS OF DEMO CRA CY 15 

and extent of foreign influence upon politics and 
society, based on the impressions thus formed, is 
not confirmed by a careful consideration of the 
facts. 

The whole number of foreigners who have entered 
the country between 1790 and 1860 is 5,296,414; 
and of these, 5,062,000 entered since the year 1820, 
or an average of 126,500 a year during forty years, 
being of course a mere driblet when compared to 
the native population. The immigration since 
1860 has been very large ; and the number actually 
resident in the whole of the United States in 
that year was about 4,000,000, or less than one- 
seventh of the entire population. But it is not 
since 1860 that the political or social deterio- 
ration which we are discussing has shown itself. 
One might imagine, on listening to some of the 
accounts one hears of the extent to which for- 
eigners are responsible for the vices of American 
politics, that at least half the inhabitants of the 
Free States had for many years been persons of 
European birth, and that the intelligent and 
educated natives of the country had had a severe 
struggle, under universal suffrage, to retain any 
share in the government, and had been long 
threatened with seeing the management of a politi- 
cal system, which requires a large amount of virtue 
and knowledge on the part of those whe live under 



16 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

it to enable it to work successfully, pass into 
the hands of a class of men bred in ignorance and 
degraded by oppression. But when it is taken 
into account that the foreign immigration has 
flowed slowly during a great number of years, that 
a large proportion of it has, of course, been com- 
posed of women and children, and that the small 
number of voters which it in any one year has con- 
tributed to the electoral body, have been scattered 
over the Union from Maine to California, and have 
been divided into different camps by difference of 
language, religion, and nationality, and have been 
generally too ignorant and helpless to devise or 
pursue a common policy, it is easy to see that the 
current notion of the extent of their influence on 
national politics and on political life, has been 
greatly exaggerated. 

The only instance, we believe, in which the 
foreigners can be said to have combined to make 
their influence felt at the elections, occurred dur- 
ing the " Know Nothing " movement ; but this was 
the result of a direct attack on their own privileges 
and standing. On all other occasions, we find them 
serving under American leaders, and assailing or 
defending purely American ideas ; and so far from 
seeking position or influence by banding together, 
their great aim and desire are, as is well known, to 
efface all marks of their foreign origin, and secure 



AltlSTO CRA TIC OPINIONS OF DEMO CBA CY 17 

complete absorption in the American population. 
And how do they accomplish this ? Not by im- 
posing their ideas on the natives, or dragging them 
down to their level, but by adopting native ideas 
and manners and customs, educating their children 
in American habits, or, in other words, raising 
themselves to the American level. In fact, there 
is nothing they resent so keenly as any attempt to 
place them in a different category, or ascribe to 
them different interests or motives, from those of 
Americans. If they were conscious of the power 
of making themselves felt as a separate body, this 
would hardly be the case. So far from seeking to 
obliterate the distinction between themselves and 
Americans, they would endeavor to maintain and 
perpetuate it. 

It may be said, however, that, although the for- 
eign element in the population may not influence 
American politics in a way sufficient to account for 
the political changes of the last half-century di- 
rectly by its votes, it does influence them indirectly 
by the modifications it effects in the national char- 
acter through intermarriage and social intercourse. 
The effect upon temperament of intermixture of 
blood is very much too obscure a subject, in our 
opinion, to be safely made the basis of any theory 
of national progress or decline, even by those who 
attach most importance to it, and profess to know 



18 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

most about it. But even if we accord it all the 
force they claim for it, time enough has not yet 
elapsed to enable us to judge of its effects in this 
country. This much is certain, that the great feat- 
ures of the American character do not seem to 
have undergone any sensible change since the Rev- 
olution. The American of to-day, as an individual, 
presents very much the same great traits, moral 
and intellectual, which his father and grandfather 
presented before him ; the main difference between 
the three generations being, that the present one 
displays its idiosyncrasies on a very much wider 
field. A chemical analysis (as it has been termed) 
of natural character is, however, something from 
which no sound thinker will ever hope to arrive at 
conclusions of much value for any purposes not 
purely speculative. 

As regards the influence exercised on American 
life by foreigners through the medium of social in- 
tercourse, we doubt very much if anybody has ever 
attached much importance to it, who has given the 
matter any serious consideration. All that seems 
necessary to remove the idea that it has been in- 
strumental in modifying either American opinions 
or manners, is to call attention to the class of so- 
ciety from which the immigrants are generally 
drawn, and to the social position which they oc- 
cupy in this country. If we except a few lawyers, 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 19 

a few doctors, a few professors and teachers, and a 
few merchants in the large cities, eager to make 
money enough to enable them to return with fort- 
unes to their native country, it may be said that 
ninety-nine out of every hundred foreigners who 
come to the United States with the intention of set- 
tling here, are drawn from the ranks of the Euro- 
pean peasantry — Germans, entirely ignorant of 
the English language ; and Irish, who, as well as 
the Germans, are separated from even the poorest 
of the native population by an entirely different 
standard of living, and a wide difference of habits 
and of religion. There is between them and even 
the lower grades of American society a barrier, 
which is none the less formidable for not being 
recognized by law. They fill, all but exclusively, 
the menial callings, and intermarriage between 
them and pure-blooded Americans is very rare. 
And, as we have said, so far from acting as propa- 
gators of foreign opinions or manners, the whole 
energy of the new-comers is spent, for years after 
their arrival, not in diffusing their own ways of 
thinking and feeling, but in strenuous and gener- 
ally successful efforts to get rid of them, and adopt 
those of their American neighbors. 

When we come to consider the European ex- 
planation of the defects which show themselves 
in the political and social system of the United 



20 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

States — and it is an explanation which large num- 
bers of Americans belonging to the wealthier 
classes have of late years been disposed to accept 
as the true one — that they are the direct and all 
but inevitable result of the spread of democracy, 
we are met on the threshold by the authority of a 
great name, of which we desire to speak with all 
possible respect. That theory of the cause of the 
decline in the character and ability of public men in 
America, and the consequent increasing corruption 
which marks our public life, of the decrease of re- 
spect for law and authority, and of the growing 
absorption in the pursuit of money, which, before 
the war at least, were so generally observed and 
deplored, undoubtedly owes to M. de Tocqueville 
most of its weight and authority. His " Democ- 
racy in America" was and is perhaps the most 
remarkable contribution to the philosophy of poli- 
tics in modern times. It solves some of the most 
puzzling problems of a novel condition of society, 
and one of which the European world, prior to the 
appearance of his book, knew very little, with an 
ease and dexterity which it is impossible, even for 
those who mistrust many of his conclusions, not to 
admire. And the book is throughout evidently 
the product of laborious thinking and conscientious 
and painstaking observation, controlled by a sound 
philosophic method. Probably no one, and cer- 



A RISTO OR A TIC OPINIONS OF DEMO OR A C Y 21 

tainly no foreigner, was ever so successful in 
sketching American character, in catching the 
spirit of American life, and in revealing the nature 
and tendency of American ideas. 

He has framed a theory of the influences and 
tendencies of democracy, partly a priori by de- 
ductions from the principles of human nature, and 
partly from his observations of social phenomena 
in France and America ; and this is, we believe, 
the process now recognized as the only one that is 
trustworthy in the conduct of inquiries in social 
science. But the conclusions thus drawn depend 
inevitably for their soundness on the accuracy of 
the observations on which they are partly based, 
and by which alone their accuracy can, at present, 
be tested. If the peculiar state of opinions, feel- 
ings, and manners, and peculiar tone of thought, 
which M. de Tocqueville found in America, be not 
really altogether the result of equality of conditions, 
or of democratic institutions, that portion of his 
speculations which is dependent on the correctness 
of this assumption of course falls to the ground ; 
and a very large portion of them is dependent 
upon it. 

Nevertheless, to assume that those social phe- 
nomena which are peculiar to America are solely 
the result of democracy, is to attempt the solu- 
tion of social problems by what Mr. Mill calls the 



22 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

" chemical method," the imperfection of which we 
cannot do better than describe in his own words. 

" If so little can be done by the experimental method to 
determine the conditions of an effect of many combined 
causes in the case of medical science, still less is this 
method applicable to a class of phenomena more compli- 
cated than even those of physiology — the phenomena of 
politics and history. There the plurality of causes exists 
in almost boundless excess, and the effects are for the 
most part inextricably interwoven with one another. To 
add to the embarrassment, most of the inquiries in politi- 
cal science relate to the production of effects of the most 
comprehensive description, such as the public wealth, 
public security, public morality, and the like — results 
liable to be affected directly or indirectly, either in plus 
or in minus, by nearly every fact which exists or event 
which occurs in human society. The vulgar notion that 
the safe methods on political subjects are those of Baco- 
nian induction, that the true guide is not generally rea- 
soning but specific experience, will one day be quoted as 
among the most unequivocal marks of a low state of the 
speculative faculties in any age in which it is accredited. 
Nothing can be more ludicrous than the sort of parodies 
on experimental reasoning which one is accustomed to 
meet with, not in popular discussions only, but in grave 
treatises, when affairs of nations are the theme. ' How,' 
it is asked, ' can an institution be bad, when the country 
has prospered under it ? ' ' How can such or such causes 
have contributed to the prosperity of one country, when 
another has prospered without them ? ' "Whoever makes 
use of an argument of this sort, not intending to deceive, 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 23 

should be sent back to learn the elements of some one of 
the more easy physical sciences. Such reasoners ignore 
the fact of a plurality of causes in the very case which af- 
fords the most signal example of it." — Logic, Vol. II., pp. 
489, 490, Eng. ed. 

To make American society what it is, no one 
cause has sufficed, and what number or combina- 
tion of causes has been instrumental in creating 
the phenomena which attract so much of the at- 
tention of political philosophers, it is impossible 
in the existing state of political science to deter- 
mine. 

It would be very unjust to M. de Tocqueville to 
leave it to be understood that he himself was not 
fully aware of all this. In fact, he expressly ac- 
knowledges in more than one place the existence 
of a plurality of causes for all the phenomena of 
American society, as well as that of other countries. 
He recognizes the immense influence " which the 
nature of the country, the origin of its inhabitants, 
the religion of the early settlers, their acquired 
knowledge, their previous habits, have exercised 
and do exercise independently of democracy upon 
their mode of thought and feeling." (Yol. II., p. 
iv, Bowen's ed.) And he in various places warns 
his readers that the phenomena he is discussing 
are either due to other causes than " the principle 
of equality," or are rather American than demo- 



24 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

cratic. But he seems frequently to forget this in 
the course of his reasoning, and on almost every 
page draws conclusions as to the probable condi- 
tion of democratic society in general from what 
he describes as American society, or else draws 
these conclusions from general principles, and 
verifies them by an examination of American in- 
stitutions or manners. The effect of either of 
these processes on the mind of the ordinary reader 
is, of course, very similar. We have not space to 
quote as fully as would be necessary, if we quoted 
at all, in support of these comments ; but anyone 
who consults the chapters entitled, respectively, 
" Why Americans are more addicted to Practical 
than to Theoretical Science," " The Literary Char- 
acteristics of Democratic Times," " Why American 
Writers and Orators often use an Inflated Style," 
" Of Parliamentary Eloquence in the United States," 
"Why the Americans are so Restless in the midst 
of their Prosperity," as well as most of the sub- 
sequent ones, will find the remarks we have made 
on the author's method of reasoning fully borne 
out. And the discussions of the nature and ten- 
dencies of democratic institutions which have been 
created in Europe by the war prove, we think, all 
but conclusively, that, whatever may have been his 
own state of mind in writing, De Tocqueville's in- 
fluence on European opinion has been to a certain 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 25 

extent misleading. Hardly one book or article in 
newspaper cr magazine has appeared on Ameri- 
can affairs, in which any attempt is made to ex- 
tract lessons from our condition for English guid- 
ance, which does not take it for granted, not only 
that democracy has produced everything that is 
considered objectionable in American society, but 
that democratic institutions transferred to any 
other country would give rise to precisely the 
same phenomena. A very large portion of the in- 
tense hostility of the upper classes to the United 
States is due to the prevalence amongst them of 
this delusion. 

We cannot, for our part, help believing that any 
speculation as to the causes of the peculiar phe- 
nomena of American society, in which its outward 
circumstances during the last eighty years do not 
occupy the leading position, must lead to conclu- 
sions radically erroneous, and calculated to do 
great injustice not only to the American people, 
but to democracy itself. At these, nevertheless, 
M. de Tocqueville has only glanced, and most of 
those who have followed him in discussing demo- 
cratic tendencies have overlooked them altogether. 

If we inquire what are those phenomena of 
American society which it is generally agreed dis- 
tinguish it from that of older countries, we shall 
find, we are satisfied, that by far the larger num- 



26 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ber of them may be attributed in a great measure 
to what, for want of a better name, we shall call 
" the frontier life " led by a large proportion of the 
inhabitants, and to the influence of this portion on 
manners and legislation, rather than to political 
institutions, or even to the equality of conditions. 
In fact, we think that these phenomena, and par- 
ticularly those of them which excite most odium 
in Europe, instead of being the effect of democ- 
racy, are partly its cause, and that it has been to 
their agency more than to aught else, that the dem- 
ocratic tide in America has owed most of its force 
and violence. 

If we examine closely the history of the North- 
ern Colonies, we shall find that, just as their 
founders left England in search of religious liberty, 
but were careful not to suffer it within their juris- 
diction, so also, although they were most of them 
animated by republican sentiments, and although 
a commonwealth was doubtless their ideal polity, 
"the principle of equality" never obtained any 
recognition, either in fact or in theory, amongst 
them or their descendants, down to the time of the 
Revolution. The distinction between the gentle- 
man and the common man not only existed in 
New England till the end of the last century, but 
it was recognized in forms of address, a mode 
of making it peculiarly repugnant to democratic 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 27 

feeling. Nor, so far as we can learn, was " the 
principle of authority" much weaker in the Colo- 
nies, at any period of their history, than in Eng- 
land. The civil functionaries in Boston and Ply- 
mouth were held in a respect very little, if at all, 
short of that which was rendered to such digni- 
taries in London. The clergy exercised an influ- 
ence over both manners and politics which, it is 
very certain, they never secured in the mother 
country. And the family bond, in spite of the 
very different conditions by which it was surround- 
ed in the New World, was not, we believe, weaker 
than in the Old. Down to the time of the Revolu- 
tion the paterfamilias was still a power in society, 
and exercised an amount of control over the life 
and conduct of his children, and received from 
them an amount of homage, which are no longer 
seen. Etiquette, both public and private, was still 
an object of attention and respect. Members 
of the Colonial legislatures were really represen- 
tatives, and not, as now, delegates; and to sit 
amongst them was an honor to which persons 
without an established social position did not 
readily aspire. Legislation, too, though it might 
be based on erroneous principles, was rarely so 
reckless or so hasty as at present. And, though 
last not least, the religious organizations subjected 
nearly every member of the community to a dis- 



28 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

cipline so rigid and exacting, that it has left marks 
on the New England mind and character which will 
probably not be effaced as long as the race lasts. 

How was it that this state of things lasted so 
long ? How was it that the ideas brought by the 
Colonists from the Old World retained their force 
for a century and a half, in spite of the facts that 
communication with the mother country was rare, 
slow, and difficult, that she exercised little or no 
influence at that time through her literature, for 
literature had not then been popularized, that the 
life led by the Colonists was such as to bring the 
idea of equality into the fullest prominence, that 
hereditary wealth was almost unknown amongst 
them, and that their social condition necessarily 
fostered individualism? How was it that that 
democratic tide which, within the last fifty years, 
has overwhelmed everything, during the previous 
hundred and fifty gave so few signs of its rising ? 

The Saturday Review, in an attempt it made 
about a year ago to answer these questions, as- 
cribed the rapid progress of democracy in America 
since the Kevolution to the stoppage at that 
period of the supply of younger sons of gentle- 
men, which, according to the writer, was then be- 
ginning to flow into the country, and would, if the 
separation had not taken place, have continued 
to flow in ever since. Another explanation fre- 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 29 

quently offered by speculators of the same school 
is, that the change was due to the removal of the 
social influence of the monarchy, which, as long as 
the connection with the mother country lasted, 
prevented the republican form of government, 
which in reality already existed, from producing 
its natural effect on manners and ideas. 

Both of these theories, however, receive a severe 
blow from the course of events in Australia. This 
colony was established on a thoroughly aristocratic 
basis. It received and continues to receive a large 
contribution of " younger sons " than has fallen to 
the lot of any other, and great numbers of them 
went out with sufficient capital to enable them to 
maintain their social position. The land-laws, too, 
encouraged the appropriation of large tracts of 
country to their exclusive use as sheep pastures, 
and for a long while rendered capital almost as 
essential to success in life there as in England. 
The colony had that which we are now taught 
to consider the essential basis of aristocratic so- 
ciety, a servile class, in the convicts, and, more 
than this, it has remained up to the present in so- 
cial and political dependence on England ; yet in 
spite of all these things the progress of democracy 
there has been steady and rapid. Universal suf- 
frage has been established throughout the island ; 
the property qualification for members of the 



30 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

legislatures has been abolished ; the vote is taken 
by ballot, and the press and public life are almost 
exact counterparts of those of the United States, 
and all this within eighty years of the first settle- 
ment of the country. 

We are far from asserting that the idea of the 
equality of men, which, according to Professor 
Maine, was extracted from the Eoman juridical 
maxim that " men were born equal," converted, by 
a not uncommon transformation, by the French 
literary men of the eighteenth century into a po- 
litical dogma, and by them transmitted to the Vir- 
ginian lawyers, had nothing to do, after its ma- 
nipulation by the Jeffersonian school, with the 
spread of democracy in the United States. But 
it could, after all, amongst a people so intensely 
practical as the Americans, and so averse from 
speculation in politics, have effected very little, if 
the field had not been prepared for it by other 
causes. It could never have embodied itself either 
in political or social movements of the popular 
mind, had it not been made ready for its recep- 
tion by influences of vastly more potency than a 
foreign dogma can ever have amongst a people of 
Anglo-Saxon origin. 

The agency which, in our opinion, gave democ- 
racy its first great impulse in the United States, 
which has promoted its spread ever since, and 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 31 

has contributed most powerfully to the produc- 
tion of those phenomena in American society 
which hostile critics set down as peculiarly demo- 
cratic, was neither the origin of the Colonists, nor 
the circumstances under which they came to the 
country, nor their religious belief ; but the great 
change in the distribution of the population, which 
began soon after the Eevolution, and which con- 
tinues its operation up to the present time. 

Population during the first hundred years of 
Colonial history was kept from spreading widely 
by its smallness, by the Indians, and by the at- 
traction of the sea-coast, which furnished a ready 
means of intercommunication. The very feeble- 
ness of the Colonists in point of numbers consti- 
tuted a strong motive for keeping close together. 
The aborigines, who still held the forests all 
around them, were a standing menace to their se- 
curity, and could only be kept in check by con- 
stant and watchful co-operation. Moreover, labor 
was too scarce to make the opening of roads into 
the interior an easy task ; and even when opened 
they furnished but sorry facilities for traffic. The 
weight of this consideration can be better appre- 
ciated by remembering that until the present 
century America was completely dependent on 
Europe, not only for the luxuries, but for most of 
the comforts and conveniences and many of the 



32 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

necessaries of ]ife. During the Colonial period, 
and especially during the early part of it, most 
of the clothing and tools of the inhabitants were 
brought from England ; which fact, of course, in 
itself furnished a strong reason for not wandering 
far from the coast. Accordingly we find that, at 
the outbreak of the Kevolution, the Colonists con- 
sisted of a string of settlements along the shore, 
lying a few miles apart, and carrying on most of 
their intercourse by water. Even the pioneers had 
rarely penetrated inland more than fifty or a hun- 
dred miles, and generally along the rivers only. 

Now these obstacles to expansion performed for 
the Colonists precisely the same office which is 
performed in older countries by want of space, 
and exercised much the same influence on their 
social progress. It produced comparative density 
of population ; and the effects of density of popu- 
lation, wherever it is not accompanied by very 
great numbers, as in large cities, are well known. 
It strengthens public opinion, represses individ- 
ualism, tightens the social relations, and thus gives 
fixity to old customs and ideas, and stability to 
authority. It did all this and more for the early 
settlers. They landed from Europe in companies, 
with a social organization already formed ; and 
the difficulty of scattering enabled them to pre- 
serve it, and preserve the ideas on which it was 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 33 

based, for over a century, in spite of the fact that 
their daily life was one which tended powerfully 
to develop the spirit of independence and self- 
reliance — more so, in fact, than that of our back- 
woodsmen at the present day, for most of the ap- 
pliances by which modern invention mitigates the 
hardships of pioneering were then wanting. The 
Church retained its hold on the young and on the 
old ; the opinion of the community kept even the 
strongest natures in subjection, and all the more, 
readily, because in those days the community to 
each of its members was the world. It was dif- 
ficult to leave it, and there was no appeal from its 
judgments. 

The history of colonization in all ages and climes 
tells much the same story. "Wherever the colonists 
are prevented by any cause from scattering, and 
congregate from the outset in communities, the 
colony remains a tolerably faithful reflection of life 
and manners in the mother country. 

The completeness with which the individual in 
the Greek republics was merged in the state or 
city, rendered the notion of individual action or 
individual existence, apart from the community to 
which he belonged, abhorrent to him. He never 
thought of himself in any character but that of a 
citizen. Consequently, we find that Greek coloni- 
zation meant simply the production on a foreign 



34 POLITICAL AND EC 0X0 MIC ESSAYS 

shore of as faithful an image of the metropolis as 
circumstances would permit. The Colonists, far 
from scattering in search of fortune, massed them- 
selves together in towns ; and the result was that 
the Greek ideas and traditions and customs, both 
political and religious, were preserved with the 
most extraordinary fidelity ; and this is rendered 
all the more remarkable from the fact that the ele- 
ments of which ancient colonies were composed 
were at least as heterogeneous as those of the col- 
onies of modern times.* The Eoman colonies, ex- 
cept the military ones of later days, were founded 
under the influence of the same feeling, and re- 
mained, however far removed from the great city, 
her living images — "effigies parva, simulacraque 
populi Eomani." 

* Seneca's account of the causes which led to emigration in 
ancient times is curious, from its applicability to the emigration 
of our own day. "Nee omnibus eadem causa relinquendi, 
quaerendique patriam fuit. Alios excidia urbium suarum, hos- 
tilibus armis elapsos, in aliena, spoliatos suis, expulerunt ; alios 
domestica seditio subrnovit ; alios nimia superfluentis populi fre- 
quentia, ad exonerandas vires, emisit ; alios pestilentia, aut fre- 
quens terrarum hiatus, aut aliqua intoleranda infelicis soli vitia 
ejecerunt; quosdam fertilis orae et in majus laudatse, fama cor- 
rupit; alios alia causa excivit domibus suis." — Consol. ad Hel- 
viam., Cap. 6. War, revolution, over-population, pestilence, 
earthquakes, poverty of soil, and a vague desire of bettering 
their condition, are the causes that still send men forth in quest 
of " fresh fields and pastures new." 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 35 

In those modern colonies which have, for any 
reason, been prevented from scattering widely, we 
witness much the same phenomena. The South 
American, who is gregarious by temperament, and 
who is cooped up on the edge of his great rivers 
by the impenetrability of tropical forests, remains 
to this day simply an indolent Spaniard, as con- 
servative, as hostile to novelties or movement, as 
any peasant or shop-keeper in Aragon. And if 
we travel through Lower Canada, we find that the 
habitans, whose French horror of solitude, as well 
as the conquest of the country by the British, has 
kept them congregated in the old settlements, have 
preserved until very recently the social organi- 
zation under which the first emigrants left their 
country. They continued to be the only faithful 
picture of the France which the Revolution de- 
stroyed, and even yet any one who wishes to get 
an accurate knowledge of the feelings, relations, 
and ideas which formed the basis of the old regime, 
would find them in far better preservation on the 
banks of the St. Lawrence than on those of the 
Loire or the Garonne. 

The Revolutionary struggle in America pro- 
duced the usual effect of great civil commotions. 
It unsettled industry, broke up families, reduced 
large numbers to poverty, and diminished produc- 
tion ; and, by habituating large bodies of men to 



36 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the change and license of camp life, rendered the 
even tenor of the way which they had previously 
pursued in their homes no longer tolerable. Then 
came the usual sequelce of a long war. When peace 
was concluded, a spirit of restlessness was diffused 
through the country, and an eagerness for adven- 
ture, which the fama fertilis orce that then be- 
gan to be wafted from the West intensified from 
day to day. The emigration westward set in with 
a vigor which had never before been witnessed; 
and thenceforward, for a short period, new States 
were rapidly added to the confederation. Ken- 
tucky came in in 1792 ; Tennessee, in 1796 ; Ohio, 
in 1802 ; but here there was a pause. The move- 
ment was checked evidently by the material diffi- 
culties which attended any further advance. Either 
it had reached a point at which remoteness from 
civilization became inconvenient or disagreeable, 
or else the drain on the population of the Eastern 
States had exhausted all that portion of it which 
was fit for pioneering. During the next fourteen 
years there was no new State added to the Union, 
except Louisiana, which was admitted in 1812 ; 
but in 1816 the stream appears to have again begun 
to flow into the wilderness. Indiana was admitted 
that year ; Mississippi followed in 1817 ; Illinois, 
in 1818 ; Alabama, in 1819 ; and Missouri, in 
1821. Now, as this increase was contemporaneous 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 37 

with the spread of steam navigation on the great 
rivers, it is fair to presume that it was in a large 
degree due to it. There was then another pause of 
fifteen years, at the close of which the influence of 
the railroads which were then getting into opera- 
tion began to show itself ; and from this time for- 
ward, the movement of population into the West- 
ern wilds has steadily increased from year to year, 
being swelled by the affluent from abroad which 
has poured into the United States between the 
years 1820 and 1860 the enormous number of 
5,062,414 persons. Arkansas, Michigan, Texas. 
"Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Kansas have 
thus been added to the Union in rapid succession. 
We omit from consideration the Pacific States, 
California, Oregon, and Nevada. 

It must be constantly borne in mind that 
this wonderful diffusion of population over the 
wilderness which seventy years ago lay between 
the seaboard States and the Mississippi Valley, 
could not have taken place without the application 
of steam to locomotion. In the absence of this 
invention, the number of new settlements must 
always have borne a small proportion to the old 
ones. The portion of the community in which 
habits and modes of thought were tolerably fixed, 
in which experience was highly valued, traditions 
were held in reverence, and on which the past had 



38 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

left traces of greater or less depth, would have so 
largely exceeded the portion engaged in the work 
of actually reclaiming the wilderness, that it would 
either have held the latter in political and moral 
subjection, and have imposed its ideas and man- 
ners on it, or would, at all events, have remained 
impervious to its influence. The West, instead of 
creating, as it has done, a social type in many re- 
spects distinct, would have remained completely 
under Eastern influence, and have simply repro- 
duced the society from which it had sprung, its 
manners, ideas, and aspirations. 

But with the assistance of steamboats and rail- 
ways, and of immigration from Europe, the pio- 
neering element in the population, the class devot- 
ed to the task of creating new political and social 
organizations as distinguished from that engaged 
in perfecting old ones, assumed a great prepon- 
derance. It spread itself thinly over a vast area 
of soil, of such extraordinary fertility that a very 
slight amount of toil expended on it affords returns 
that might have satisfied even the dreams of Span- 
ish avarice. The result has been very much what 
we might have concluded, a priori, that it would 
be. A society composed at the period of its for- 
mation mainly of young men, coming from all parts 
of the world in quest of fortune, released from the 
ordinary restraints of family, church, and public 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 39 

opinion, even of the civil law, naturally and inevit- 
ably acquires a certain contempt for authority and 
impatience of it, and individualism among them 
develops itself very rapidly. If you place this 
society, thus constituted, in the midst of a wilder- 
ness, where each member of it has to contend, tools 
in hand, with Nature herself for wealth, or even sub- 
sistence, the ties which bind him to his fellows will 
for a while at least be rarely anything stronger than 
that of simple contiguity. The only mutual ob- 
ligation which this relation suggests strongly is 
that of rendering assistance occasionally in over- 
coming material difficulties — in other words, the 
simplest bond which can unite human beings. Each 
person is, from the necessity of the case, so ab- 
sorbed in his own struggle for existence, that he has 
seldom occasion or time for the consideration and 
cultivation of his social relations. He knows noth- 
ing of the antecedents of his neighbors, nor they of 
his. They are not drawn together, in all proba- 
bility, by a single memory or association. They 
have drifted into the same locality, it is true, under 
the guidance of a common impulse, and this a selfish 
one. So that the settler gets into the habit of look- 
ing at himself as an individual, of contemplating 
himself and his career separate and apart from the 
social organization. We do not say that this breeds 
selfishness — far from it ; but it breeds individualism. 



40 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

If the members of such a society are compelled 
to work hard for the gratification of their desires, 
to meet and overcome great difficulties and hard- 
ships and dangers, the result is naturally the pro- 
duction of great energy, of great audacity, and of a 
self-confidence that rises into conceit. In this 
self-confidence is almost always contained a pro- 
digious contempt for experience and for theory. 
The ends which such men have had in view having 
all been attained without the aid of either, they 
cannot see the use of them. They have found 
their own wits sufficient for the solution of every 
problem that has presented itself to them, so that 
deference to the authority of general maxims 
framed by persons who never found themselves 
placed in similar circumstances, wears an air of 
weakness or absurdity. 

The devotion to material pursuits, which is 
necessaiy at the outset, is made absorbing in a 
country like the West, by the richness of the 
prizes which are offered to shrewd speculation and 
successful industry. "Where probable or even pos- 
sible gains are so great, the whole community gives 
itself up to the chase of them with an eagerness 
which is not democratic, but human. It would not, 
we think, be difficult to show that the existence in 
old countries of an idle class, content with moder- 
ate and secured fortunes, and devoted solely to 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 41 

amusement and the cultivation of art or literature, 
is largely due to the immense difficulty of making 
profitable investments. In those countries the 
capital accumulated by past generations is so great, 
and every field of industry is so thronged, that a 
very large number of those who find themselves 
possessed of a sum of money are forced to relin- 
quish all hope of increasing it. For we know that 
whenever, as during " the railway mania " in Eng- 
land, or Law's Mississippi scheme in France, the 
chance, real or imaginary, is offered of drawing 
such prizes as every day fall to the lot of hundreds 
in America, men of every grade and calling rush 
after them with an ardor which no training or 
tastes or antecedents seem sufficient to restrain. 
The desire for wealth is one of the constant forces 
of human society, and if it seems to assert its sway 
more imperiously here than in Europe, it is not 
because it is fostered by the equality of conditions, 
but because its gratification is surrounded by fewer 
obstacles. 

If to strong individualism, contempt for experi- 
ence, and eagerness in pursuit of material gain, we 
add want of respect for training, and profound 
faith in natural qualities, great indifference as to 
the future, the absence of a strong sense of social 
or national continuity, and of taste in art and liter- 
ature and oratory, we have, we believe, enumer- 



42 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ated the leading defects which European writers 
consider inherent in democratic society. But these, 
too, are marked peculiarities of all societies newly 
organized in a new country. We know them to be 
so by actual observation, for which modern coloni- 
zation has afforded us abundant facilities ; while it 
is safe to say that trustworthy illustrations of them 
have never been discovered in any society which 
was simply democratic and not new. There is no 
feature of life in new States in America more 
marked than the general belief of the people in 
their own originality, and their respect for this 
quality. The kind of man they most admire is one 
who has evolved rules for the conduct of life out 
of his own brain by the help of his own observa- 
tion ; and they entertain a strong distrust of men 
who have learned what they know by a fixed 
course of study, mainly because persons who have 
passed the early part of their lives in learning out 
of books or from teachers are generally found less 
fitted to grapple with the kind of difficulties which 
usually present themselves in Western life, than 
those who were compelled to leam to conquer them 
by actual contact with them. So that the " self- 
made man," as he is called, meaning the man who 
has surmounted, with little or no aid from educa- 
tion, those obstacles by which the larger portion 
of the community find themselves hampered and 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 43 

harassed, is looked on as a sort of type of merit 
and ability. 

The process by which the ideas that govern pri- 
vate life are transferred to the conduct of public 
affairs, is not difficult to understand. In a new 
community, in which there is not much time for 
either study or reflection, it would be difficult al- 
ways to convince the public, even if any other 
kind of man were to be had, that the kind of man 
who displays most ability in the conduct of his 
own business is not the fittest to take charge of 
that of the public. That other qualities than those 
necessary for success in the career in which every- 
body else is running should be needed for legisla- 
tion, is an idea which meets with no acceptance 
until enforced by experience. And in a really fron- 
tier village, in which no disturbing influences are in 
operation, it will probably be found that the pros- 
perous management of a dry -goods store will be 
taken as strong indication of ability to fill the 
post of Secretary of the Treasury, and deal with 
the most intricate problems of national finance. 
But the successful politician in a new country, 
where deference for experience or culture has not 
yet grown up, is, after all, the man who has most 
facility in expressing the ideas which are filling 
the heads of his neighbors. 

It may be taken as a general rule, that those 



44 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

who cannot look very far back do not look very far 
forward. Experience is the nurse of forethought. 
Youth is rarely troubled about to-morrow. Age is 
far-seeing, because it remembers so much. And 
communities made of the materials we are describ- 
ing, as they have no past, are apt to be very care- 
less about the future. The sense of political con- 
tinuity, of the identity, for political purposes, of 
each generation with the one which has preceded 
it and the one which is to follow it, and of the 
consequent responsibility of each for the acts and 
promises of the other, is rarely deeply rooted in 
a state which has no past to dwell on. We are 
therefore not surprised to find that the doctrine of 
the absence of all right on the part of one genera- 
tion to enter into any obligations that would bind 
its successor — a doctrine utterly subversive of what 
is called " public faith," and which, if carried out 
to its full extent, would reduce the intercourse 
of civilized nations to the mere interchange of 
compliments or abuse — was first openly preached 
and acted on in Mississippi, the person who now 
represents Southern statesmanship to the world 
being its author. But it is a doctrine which grows 
naturally in a new society. The reverse of it con- 
flicts strongly with the notions of the proper limits 
of accountability, which are derived from the rela- 
tions of individuals. There is little in the analo- 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OB 1 DEMOCRACY 45 

gies presented by the relations of a man either 
with his family or his fellows, in such a so- 
ciety, to suggest the expediency or propriety of 
his helping, as a citizen, to repay money which 
was borrowed before he was born. We think 
it will generally be found that, when a state formed 
by colonization, as carried on in modern times, 
displays a proper disposition with regard to the 
public liabilities, it is rather owing to the feeling 
of local pride than to a deep sense of responsi- 
bility. When a loan contracted by the govern- 
ment of California, a few years ago, was declared 
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the peo- 
ple, when the question was submitted to them, at 
once shouldered the debt. But it was spoken of 
in their newspapers as a very remarkable display 
of virtue, as something of which the State might 
fairly be proud. There was evidently at the bot- 
tom of these congratulations an opinion that, in 
the absence of any legal obligation, the moral one 
was not sufficiently strong to be imperative. 

The belief that the production of an inflated, 
bombastic style of speaking and writing is one of 
the necessary results of democracy is very wide- 
spread, and is supported by M. de Tocqueville 
with more than usual confidence. He says : 

"I have frequently remarked that the Americans, who 
generally treat of business in clear, plain language, devoid 



46 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

of all ornament, and so extremely simple as to be often 
coarse, are apt to become inflated as soon as they attempt 
a more poetical diction. They then vent their pomposity 
from one end of a harangue to the other ; and to hear 
them lavish imagery on every occasion, one might fancy 
that they never spoke of anything with simplicity. 

"The English less frequently commit a similar fault. 
The cause of this may be pointed out without much diffi- 
culty. In democratic communities, each citizen is habitu- 
ally engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object, 
namely, himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he 
perceives only the immense form of society at large, or 
the still more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are 
all either extremely minute and clear, or extremely general 
and vague ; what lies between is a void. When he has 
been drawn out of his own sphere, therefore, he always 
expects that some amazing object will be offered to his 
attention ; and it is on these terms alone that he consents 
to tear himself for a moment from the petty, complicated 
cares which form the charm and the excitement of his 
life. 1 '— Vol. II., p. 94. 

But democracy produces this effect only in so 
far as it deprives writers and speakers of a high 
order of education, or draws them from a class 
which cannot or do not receive it. The unedu- 
cated or half-educated in all countries, and under 
every form of government, and in every condition of 
society, fall into an exaggerated and inflated style 
whenever they attempt to treat on paper or in pub- 
lic of any question not purely personal in its nature. 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 47 

The uncultivated Englishman or Frenchman is 
guilty of precisely the same rhetorical faults as 
the uncultivated American ; and the only reason 
why American bombast makes more impression on 
European observers than that of their own coun- 
trymen is that there is more of it, as a class of 
persons who in Europe are hardly ever called on 
to address the public, are h. America tempted or 
obliged to do so very frequently. Khetorical ex- 
aggeration is, in fact, an indication, not of a cer- 
tain political or social state, but of a certain state 
of mental culture. How it is that taste is not a 
natural gift, and what kind of training is necessary 
for its acquisition, it is not necessary to discuss 
here. It is enough to know that, without training, 
no people, except perhaps the Greeks, has ever ex- 
hibited it. America itself furnishes a very striking 
illustration of the unsoundness of M. de Tocque- 
ville's theory. A pure written and spoken style is 
found only in the democratic States of the North- 
east, because there the writers and speakers are 
often either drawn from a cultivated class, or are 
under their influence. The literature and oratory 
of the aristocratic States of the South, on the con- 
trary, are marked by an exaggeration, violence, and 
affectation so barbarous, that it may safely be said 
that no orators or writers who have ever figured in 
history have fallen to the same level. It is a 



48 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

striking proof of the extent to which the European 
public has been led astray on these subjects, that 
an English legal periodical of high standing, com- 
menting a few months ago on the absurdity of the 
harangue delivered by Midler's counsel in New 
York, assigned as one of the excuses for Southern 
secession the natural disgust felt by "cultivated 
gentlemen " at the grotesqueness, absurdity, and 
inflation which democracy infused into writing 
and public speaking at the North, An assertion 
displaying greater ignorance of the peculiar char- 
acteristics of the North and of the South, it would 
be hard to meet with. 

It may be said, however, that if democracy either 
deprives the highly educated class of all influence, 
and thus prevents their establishing an authorita- 
tive standard of taste, or if it places the half-edu- 
cated in all the prominent positions in public life, 
so that it is they who give the oratory of the coun- 
try its peculiar character, it is really as much re- 
sponsible for the national tendency to bombast as 
if it produced it by its direct action. But the an- 
swer to this is, that nearly all the extravagance and 
inflation of speech or composition which are now 
to be met with in America are contributed either 
by the South or West, both of which are just in 
that stage of mental culture in which inflation of 
language is produced as naturally as weeds on a 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 49 

rank soil. The intense and necessary absorption 
of the West in the work of developing the material 
resources of the country puts high cultivation out 
of the question, but it does not do away with the 
necessity of government. Members of Congress 
have still to be elected; State Legislatures have 
still to meet; and weighty questions have to be 
discussed by somebody — and, in default of people 
of taste, they have to be discussed by people who 
have no taste, by men who labor under the usual 
weakness and delusion of the uneducated, that 
simple and straightforward language is not fit for 
use in dealing with great public affairs. If it be 
asked how it is that this class so largely prepon- 
derates in Congress, and in public life generally, as 
to present itself to the world as a fair specimen of 
the highest culture that democracy can produce, 
we reply that the new States have now for many 
years acquired a great preponderance over the 
older ones in population and wealth and resources, 
and consequently political preponderance also. 
Upon this great mass of powerful, energetic rus- 
ticity — we do not use the word as a term of re- 
proach — the cultivation of the East has so far been 
able to make but very little impression. And this 
preponderance has been so overwhelming, that the 
West has succeeded to a certain extent in propa- 
gating in the East its ideas and manners, both 



50 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

political and social. It lias succeeded in diffusing 
to some degree, even in New England, its con- 
tempt for and indifference to refinement or culture, 
its mistrust of men who have made politics a 
study, and its faith in the infallibility of majorities, 
not simply as a necessary political assumption, but 
as an ethical fact. Its influence in Congress is of 
course paramount, and its influence on the govern- 
ment every year increases. It now supplies our 
Presidents, a large body of our legislators, and a 
large portion of our army. It gives its tone to the 
national thought, and its direction to the national 
policy. As might be expected, it has, with its 
rude, wild energy, its excess of animal life, com- 
pletely overwhelmed the thinkers of the older 
States, and driven most of them into private life, 
and taken upon itself to represent American 
democracy to the world. American democracy is 
thus made answerable by superficial observers for 
faults which flow not from its own nature, but from 
the outward circumstances of some of those who 
live under it. 

We need hardly say, that we are very far from 
asserting that the state of society which we have 
been describing as " Western " can be predicated 
literally either of the whole West or of any part of 
it. There is probably not a idllage in it of which 
our picture is true in every particular. There are 



ARISTOCRATIC OFWIONS OF DEMOCRACY 51 

doubtless to be found in every district many de- 
partures from the general type which we have 
sketched, many modifications effected by the pres- 
ence of cultivated people, or by the extraordinary 
intelligence and unusually favorable antecedents 
of the inhabitants. What we have endeavored to 
portray is the general features of society in new 
countries which have been subjected to the ordi- 
nary agencies of frontier life, and exempted from 
the disturbing influences of older and more fin- 
ished organizations. In so far as our sketch 
is inaccurate as applied to the new States of the 
Union, to the same extent will our description of 
their influence on the East require modification. 
The study of society is not one of the exact 
sciences ; and the utmost that the most careful in- 
quirer can hope for is an approximation to the 
truth. This is all that we pretend to have achieved 
in the present instance, but it is sufficient for our 
purpose. 

In so far as the influence exercised by that por- 
tion of the population which is immersed in the 
cares and toils of frontier life on the national char- 
acter, or manners, or politics, or literature, or ora- 
tory, has been deteriorating or obstructive, it is, of 
course, fair matter for regret to all friends of ra- 
tional progress. But those who are most dis- 
heartened by the contemplation of its effects may 



52 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

find abundant consolation in the consideration that 
its action is but temporary, and that every day 
that passes weakens its force and hastens its dis- 
appearance. The greatest fault of new countries 
is their newness, and for this the great remedy is 
time. As soon as the population gets settled in its 
seat, and its attention has ceased to be distracted 
by a multiplicity of prizes, and its energies to be 
absorbed in the mere struggle for shelter and food, 
the polishing process begins. This struggle, if it 
have hardened the hands, and tanned the foreheads, 
and roughened the manners of those engaged in it, 
has also most certainly developed qualities which, 
if they do not themselves constitute national great- 
ness, are its only sure and lasting foundation. No 
friend of democracy who has watched the course of 
the West in this war can help feeling his blood 
stirred and his hopes strengthened by the vigor 
with which it has thrown itself into the strife, and 
the great richness of the blood and brain which it 
has sent into the arena. All the great generals of 
the war are Western men. No higher capacity for 
organization, for conceiving great enterprises, and 
conducting them with courage and fortitude, ac- 
curacy and punctuality, has been displayed than 
in those mushroom communities which yesterday 
were not. And if we turn from the military to the 
political field, we find everywhere the most strik- 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 53 

ing proofs of the sagacity, foresight, patriotism, 
and tenacity of their population. We wish we 
could say there had been exhibited in the East so 
general, profound, and just an appreciation of the 
remoter bearings of this great contest, of its pos- 
sible influence on society and government, as has 
been exhibited in the West. 

There are no fundamental characteristics of " an 
imperial race," which the people of the new States 
have not revealed ; and those who know them best 
see in the progress they are now making every 
reason to feel satisfied that the great material 
strength which they are developing will be, ere- 
long, controlled and directed by a very high order 
of cultivation, both intellectual and aesthetic, and 
perhaps richer, more varied, and more original in 
many of its manifestations than any that has been 
seen in modern times. If the West should in fut- 
ure answer all the demands made on it by civili- 
zation with the alacrity and success with which it 
has answered those made on it by the political 
crisis through which we are now passing, the hu- 
man race would, in a very short time, be even more 
indebted to it than the nation is already. 

If, indeed, the defects which foreign observers 
see, and many of which Americans acknowledge 
and deplore, in the politics and society of the 
United States were fairly chargeable to democracy 



54 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

— if " the principle of equality " were necessarily 
fatal to excellence in the arts, to finish in litera- 
ture, to simplicity and force in oratory, to fruitful 
exploration in the fields of science, to statesman- 
ship in the government, to discipliue in the army, 
to grace and dignity in social intercourse, to sub- 
ordination to lawful authority, and to self-re- 
straint in the various relations of life — the future 
of the world would be such as no friend of the race 
would wish to contemplate : for the spread of de- 
mocracy is on all sides acknowledged to be irre- 
sistible. Even those who watch its advance with 
most fear and foreboding confess that most civil- 
ized nations must erelong succumb to its sway. 
Its progress in some countries may be slower than 
in others, but it is constant in all ; and it is accel- 
erated by two powerful agencies — the Christian 
religion and the study of political economy. 

The Christian doctrine that men, however un- 
equal in their condition or in their gifts on earth, 
are of equal value in the eyes of their Creator, and 
are entitled to respect and consideration, if for no 
other reason, for the simple one that they are 
human souls, long as it has been preached, has, 
strange to say, only very lately begun to exercise 
any perceptible influence on politics. It led a 
troubled and precarious life for nearly eighteen 
hundred years in conventicles and debating clubs, 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 55 

in the romance of poets, in the dreams of philoso- 
phers and the schemes of philanthropists. But it 
is now fonnd in the cabinets of kings and states- 
men, on the floor of parliament-houses, and in the 
most secret of diplomatic conferences. It gives 
shape and foundation to nearly every great social 
reform, and its voice is heard above the roar of 
every revolution. 

And it derives invaluable aid in keeping its 
place and extending its influence in national coun- 
cils from the rapid spread of the study of political 
economy, a science which is based on the assump- 
tion that men are free and independent. There is 
hardly one of its principles which is applicable to 
any state of society in which each individual is 
not master of his own actions and sole guardian of 
his own welfare. In a community in which the 
relations of its members are regulated by status 
and not by contract, it has no place and no value. 
The natural result of the study and discussion 
which the ablest thinkers have expended on it 
during the last eighty years has been to place be- 
fore the civilized world in the strongest light the 
prodigious impulse which is given to human en- 
ergy and forethought and industry, and the great 
gain to society at large, by the recognition in 
legislation of the capacity, as well as of the right, 
of each human being to seek his own happiness 



56 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

in his own way. Of course no political system 
in which this principle has a place can long 
avoid conceding to all who live under it equality 
before the law ; and from equality before the 
law to the possession of an equal share in the 
making of the laws, there is, as everybody must 
see who is familiar with modern history, but a 
very short step. 

If this spread of democracy, however, was sure, 
as its enemies maintain, to render great attain- 
ments and great excellence impossible or rare, to 
make literary men slovenly and inaccurate and 
tasteless, artists mediocre, professors of science 
dull and unenterprising, and statesmen conscience- 
less and ignorant, it would threaten civilization 
with such danger that no friend of progress could 
wish to see it. But it is difficult to discover on 
what it is, either in history or human nature, that 
this apprehension is founded. M. de Tocqueville 
and all his followers take it for granted that the 
great incentive to excellence, in all countries in 
which excellence is found, is the patronage and 
encouragement of an aristocracy ; that democracy 
is generally content with mediocrity. But where 
is the proof of this ? The incentive to exertion 
which is widest, most constant, and most power- 
ful in its operation in all civilized countries, is 
the desire of distinction ; and this may be com- 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 57 

posed either of love of fame or love of wealth, or 
of both. In literary and artistic and scientific pur- 
suits, sometimes the strongest influence is exerted 
by a love of the subject. But it may be safely said 
that no man has ever yet labored in any of the 
higher callings to whom the applause and appreci- 
ation of his fellows was not one of the sweetest re- 
wards of his exertions. There is probably not a 
masterpiece in existence, either in literature or in 
art, probably few discoveries in science have ever 
been made, which we do not owe in a large meas- 
ure to the love of distinction. Who paints pict- 
ures, or has ever painted them, that they may de- 
light no eye but his own ? Who writes books 
for the mere pleasure of seeing his thoughts on 
paper ? Who discovers or invents, and is willing, 
provided the world is the better of his discover- 
ies or inventions, that another should enjoy the 
honor ? Fame has, in short, been in all ages and 
in all countries recognized as one of the strongest 
springs of human action — 

" The spur that doth the clear spirit raise 
To scorn delight and live laborious days " — 

sweetening toil, robbing danger and poverty and 
even death itself of their terrors. 

What is there, we would ask, in the nature 
of democratic institutions, that should render this 



58 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

great spring of action powerless, that should de- 
prive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to 
sleep? Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that 
one of the most marked peculiarities of democratic 
society, or of a society drifting toward democracy, 
is the fire of competition which rages in it, the 
fevered anxiety which possesses all its members 
to rise above the dead level to which the law is 
ever seeking to confine them, and by some brill- 
iant stroke become something higher and more 
remarkable than their fellows? The secret of 
that great restlessness, which is one of the most 
disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic 
countries, is in fact due to the eagerness of every- 
body to grasp the prizes of which in aristocratic 
countries only the few have much chance. And 
in no other society is success more worshipped, is 
distinction of any kind more widely flattered and 
caressed. Where is the successful author, or ar- 
tist, or discoverer, the subject of greater homage 
than in France or America ? And yet in both the 
principle of equality reigns supreme ; and his ad- 
vancement in the social scale has gone on pari 
passu in every country with the spread of demo- 
cratic ideas and manners. Grub Street was the 
author's retreat in the aristocratic age ; in this 
democratic one, he is welcome at the King's table, 
and sits at the national council-board. In demo- 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 59 

cratic societies, in fact, excellence is the first title 
to distinction ; in aristocratic ones, there are two 
or three others which are far stronger, and which 
must be stronger, or aristocracy could not exist. 
The moment you acknowledge that the highest so- 
cial position ought to be the reward of the man 
who has the most talent, you make aristocratic in- 
stitutions impossible. But to make the thirst for 
distinction lose its power over the human heart, 
you must do something more than establish equal- 
ity of conditions ; you must recast human nature 
itself. 

Nor does the view which M. de Tocqueville 
takes, and which Mr. Mill in his " Dissertations 
and Discussions " seems to share, of the character 
of the literature which democratic societies are 
likely to call for, or have supplied to them, derive 
much support from experience. Mr. Mill says, 
that in a democratic society 

''There is a greatly augmented number of moderate 
successes, fewer great literary and scientific reputations. 
Elementary and popular treatises are immensely multi- 
plied ; superficial information far more widely diffused ; 
but there are fewer who devote themselves to thought for 
its own sake, and pursue in retirement those profounder 
researches, the results of which can only be appreciated 
by a few. Literary productions are seldom highly fin- 
ished ; they are got up to be read by many, and to be read 



60 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

but once. If the -work sells for a day, the author's time 
and pains will be better laid out in writing a second, than 
in improving the first." 

There could scarcely be a better answer to this 
than the immense sale which the works of both 
Mr. Mill himself and M. de Tocqueville meet with 
here and in England. They are both philosophi- 
cal and highly finished, and yet they are read and 
studied by thousands in the two countries in 
which democracy is either triumphant or rapidly 
spreading. Illustrations of the same kind might, 
if we had space, be indefinitely multiplied. W.e 
will mention only one other. If we take that 
branch of literature, history, in which more than 
most others accuracy and research are essential, 
in which painstaking and industry and careful at- 
tention to details are absolutely necessary to give 
the result any real value, what do we find ? Why, 
that it is a field of inquiry which, until demo- 
cratic times, was barely scratched over, and that it 
is for the gratification and instruction of this much 
despised democratic " many " that it has been for 
the first time deeply ploughed and carefully culti- 
vated. There is, we believe, hardly a single his- 
torical work composed prior to the end of the last 
century, except perhaps Gibbon's, which, judged 
by the standard that the criticism of our day has 
set up, would not, though written for the " few," 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OB 1 DEMOCRACY 61 

be pronounced careless, slipshod, or superficial. 
Grote, Hallam, Motley, Prescott, Martin, Niebuhr, 
Monimsen, the most laborious, accurate, and criti- 
cal historical inquirers the world has yet seen, have 
been produced by a democratic age, and have writ- 
ten for a democratic public. Compare them as to 
thoroughness and completeness with any of their 
predecessors of any age, and you are astonished by 
the contrast ; and yet millions read and admire 
them. So also the first attempt to apply the his- 
torical method to the study of the philosophy of 
law has been made within two or three years, and 
the result is a work of extraordinary profundity, 
which is in everybody's hands. We might, by 
looking into other branches of knowledge, pro- 
duce innumerable examples of the same kind, all 
going to show, in our opinion, that although there 
is, and will always be in every democratic com- 
munity, an immense mass of slipshod, careless 
writing and speaking, the demand for accuracy, 
for finish, perhaps not in form, but certainly in 
substance, for completeness in all efforts to dis- 
cover truth or enlighten mankind, so far from 
diminishing, grows with the spread of knowledge 
and the multiplication of readers. 

There are some, however, who, while acknowl- 
edging that the love of distinction will retain its 
force under every form of social or political organ- 



62 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ization, yet maintain that to excel in the arts, sci- 
ence, or literature requires leisure, and the posses- 
sion of leisure implies the possession of fortune. 
This men in a democratic society cannot have, be- 
cause the absence of great hereditary wealth is nec- 
essary to the perpetuation of democracy. Every 
man, or nearly every man, must toil for a living ; 
and therefore it becomes impossible for him to 
gratify the thirst for distinction, let him feel it ever 
so strongly. The attention he can give to litera- 
ture or art or science must be too desultory and 
hasty, his mental training too defective, to allow 
him to work out valuable results, or conduct im- 
portant researches. To achieve great things in 
these fields, it is said and insinuated, men must 
be elevated, by the possession of fortune, above 
the vulgar, petty cares of life ; their material wants 
must be provided for before they can concentrate 
their thoughts with the requisite intensity on the 
task before them. Therefore it is to aristocracy we 
must look for any great advance in these pursuits. 
The history of literature and art and philosophy 
is, however, very far from lending confirmation to 
this opinion. If it teaches us anything, it teaches 
us that the possession of leisure, far from having 
helped men in the pursuit of knowledge, seems to 
have impeded them. Those who have pursued it 
most successfully are all but invariably those who 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 63 

have pursued it under difficulties. The possession 
of great wealth no doubt gives facilities for study 
and cultivation which the mass of mankind do not 
possess ; but it at the same time exerts an influ- 
ence on the character which, in a vast majority of 
cases, renders the owner unwilling to avail himself 
of them. We owe to the Roman aristocracy the 
great fabric of Roman jurisprudence ; but, since 
their time, what has any aristocracy done for art 
and literature, or law? They have for over a thou- 
sand years been in possession of nearly the whole 
resources of every country in Europe. They have 
had its wealth, its libraries, its archives, its teachers, 
at their disposal ; and yet was there ever a more 
pitiful record than the list of "Royal and Noble 
Authors." One can hardly help being astonished, 
too, at the smallness and paltriness of the legacies 
which the aristocracy of the aristocratic age has 
bequeathed to this democratic age which is suc- 
ceeding it. It has, indeed, handed down to us 
many glorious traditions, many noble and inspir- 
ing examples of courage and fortitude and gener- 
osity. The democratic world would certainly be 
worse off than it is if it never heard of the Cid, or 
Bayard, or Du Guesclin, of Montrose, or Hampden, 
or Russell. But what has it left behind it for which 
the lover of art may be thankful, by which litera- 
ture has been made richer, philosophy more potent 



64 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

or more fruitful? The painting and sculpture of 
modern Europe owe not only their glory, but their 
very existence, to the labors of poor and obscure 
men. The great architectural monuments by 
which its soil is covered were hardly any of them 
the product of aristocratic feeling or liberality. If 
we accept a few palaces and a few fortresses, we 
owe nearly all of them to the labor or the genius 
or the piety of the democratic cities which grew up 
in the midst of feudalism. If we take away from 
the sum total of the monuments of Continental art 
all that was created by the Italian republics, the 
commercial towns of Germany and Flanders, and 
the communes of France, and by the unaided efforts 
of the illustrious obscure, the remainder would form 
a result poor and pitiful indeed. We may say 
much the same thing of every great work in litera- 
ture, and every great discovery in science. Few of 
them have been produced by men of leisure, nearly 
all by those whose life was a long struggle to 
escape from the vulgarest and most sordid cares. 
And what is perhaps most remarkable of all is, that 
the Catholic Church, the greatest triumph of organ- 
izing genius, the most impressive example of the 
power of combination and of discipline which the 
world has ever seen, was built up and has been 
maintained by the labors of men drawn from the 
humblest ranks of society. 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY G5 

Aristocracy applied itself exclusively for ages to 
the profession of arms. If there was anything at 
which it might have seemed hopeless for democ- 
racy to compete with it, it was in the raising, 
framing, and handling of armies. But the very 
first time that a democratic society found itself 
compelled to wage war in defence of its own ideas, 
it displayed a force, an originality, a vigor and 
rapidity of conception, in this, to it, new pursuit, 
which speedily laid Europe at its feet. And the 
great master of the art of war, be it ever remem- 
bered, was born in obscurity and bred in poverty. 

Nor, long as men of leisure have devoted them- 
selves to the art of government, have they made 
any contributions worth mentioning to political 
science. They have displayed, indeed, cousum- 
mate skill and tenacity in pursuing any line of 
policy on which they have once deliberately fixed ; 
but all the great political reforms have been, 
though often carried into effect by aristocracies, 
conceived, agitated, and forced on the acceptance 
of the government by the middle and lower classes. 
The idea of equality before the law was originated 
in France by literary men. In England, the slave- 
trade was abolished by the labors of the middle 
classes. The measure met with the most vigor- 
ous opposition in the House of Lords. The eman- 
cipation of the negroes, Catholic emancipation, 



66 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

Parliamentary reform, law reform, especially the 
reform in the criminal law, free trade, and, in fact, 
nearly every change which has had for its object 
the increase of national happiness and prosperity, 
has been conceived by men of low degree, and dis- 
cussed and forced on the upper classes by men 
busy about many other things. 

We are, however, very far from believing that 
democratic society has no dangers or defects. 
What we have been endeavoring to show is, that 
the inquiry into their nature and number has been 
greatly impeded by the natural disposition of for- 
eign observers to take the United States as a fair 
specimen of what democracy is under the most 
favorable circumstances. The enormous extent of 
unoccupied land at our disposal, which raises 
every man in the community above want, by af- 
fording a ready outlet for surplus population, is 
constantly spoken of as a condition wholly favor- 
able to the democratic experiment — more favor- 
able than could possibly offer itself elsewhere. In 
so far as it contributes to the general happiness 
and comfort, it no doubt makes the work of gov- 
ernment easy; but what we think no political 
philosopher ought to forget is, that it also offers 
serious obstacles to the settlement of a new society 
on a firm basis, and produces a certain appearance 
of confusion and instability, both in manners and 



ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 67 

ideas, which unfit it to furnish a basis for any in- 
ductions of much value as to the tendencies to 
defects either of an equality of conditions or of 
democratic institutions. 



POPULAK GOVERNMENT 

I have been reading, with the respect due to 
everything which Sir Henry Maine produces, his 
last volume, and particularly that most interesting 
chapter of it on " The Prospects of Popular Gov- 
ernment." I confess, however, to having laid it 
down, after a careful perusal, without gettiug a 
very clear idea of the lesson he undertakes to 
teach. He says in his preface : 

In the essay on the Prospects of Popular Government 
I have shown that as a matter of fact Popular Government, 
since its reintroduction into the modern world, has proved 
itself to be extremely fragile. In the essay on the Nature 
of Democracy I have given reasons for thinking that, in 
the extreme form to which it tends, it is of all kinds of 
government by far the most difficult. In the Age of 
Progress I have argued that, in the perpetual change 
which, as understood in modern times, it appears to de- 
mand, it is not in harmony with the normal forces ruling 
human nature, and is apt, therefore, to lead to cruel dis- 
appointment or serious disaster. 

Now the phrase " reintroduction into the modern 
world " implies that Popular Government existed 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 69 

in the ancient world, and, if so, an account of its 
working in the ancient world would certainly be 
a very important aid in judging whether it is 
really as " fragile " as Sir Henry Maine thinks it, 
for the longer the period in which we watch the 
working of an institution, the more we know about 
its durability. But he disposes of what he calls 
" the short-lived Athenian Democracy under 
whose shelter Art, Science, and Philosophy shot 
so wonderfully upward" by saying that " it was 
only an aristocracy which rose on the ruins of still 
another." In fact, he lays it down as a general 
proposition "that the progress of mankind has 
hitherto been effected by the rise and fall of 
aristocracies, by the formation of one aristocracy 
within another," and that " there have been many 
so-called democracies which have rendered ser- 
vices beyond price to civilization, but they were 
only peculiar forms of aristocracy." It is fair, I 
think, to conclude from this that there was no such 
thing as Popular Government in the ancient world 
at all, and that its appearance in the modern world 
was its first appearance anywhere, and was there- 
fore not a " reintroduction." Consequently all 
that Sir Heury Maine, or any one else, knows 
about its fragility, he knows from observation of 
its working in the modern world. Whether a 
thing is durable or not, we can only tell from see- 



70 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ing it exposed, over a long period, to destructive 
agencies. That this period should in the case of 
a government be very long indeed, it is hardly 
necessary to say. Nothing is more delusive in 
the work of political speculation than short 
periods of observation. The most durable gov- 
ernment the modern world has seen was that of 
the Venetian Kepublic, but there were in its his- 
tory several periods of ten, twenty, or even fifty, 
years in which its continuance must have seemed 
to contemporaries something hardly to be looked 
for. 

Now what opportunities for observing the dura- 
bility of Popular Government has Sir Henry Maine 
had, on his own showing ? The ancient world has 
afforded him none : what has the modern world 
afforded him ? In other words, when did Popular 
Government first reveal itself to the philosophic 
eye ? There is no doubt, he says, that Popular 
Government is of purely English origin, and that 
it made its first appearance in the triumph of the 
doctrine that government is the servant of the 
community, over the doctrine that it is the master 
of the community. The former, he says, after 
" tremendous struggles," was in spirit, if not in 
words, " affirmed in 1689." But that triumph was 
not complete, for he adds : " It was long before 
this doctrine was either fully carried out by the 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 71 

nation, or fully accepted by its rulers." In fact, 
lie gives us to understand that it has not yet 
reached its final stage — that is, the stage at which 
tests of durability can begin to be applied to it. 
" What we are witnessing," he says, " in West 
European politics is not so much the establish- 
ment of a definite system, as the continuance, at 
various rates, of a process." 

I gather from all this that Popular Government, 
as now known to us in the modern world, is a 
process which began about two centuries ago in a 
change of opinion on the part of the community in 
England with regard to the relations of the rulers 
and the ruled ; that it did not, however, really in- 
fluence English politics until about the beginning 
of this century. Consequently, Popular Govern- 
ment is, for the purposes of the philosophic ob- 
server, about eighty years old, and no more, and 
anything we desire to know about its durability 
and its general prospects we must learn from its 
history during that period. But the history of 
these eighty years seems to furnish a very small 
basis for induction on a matter so serious as the 
nature and prospects of a form of government. 
Sir Henry Maine, however, makes the most of it. 
Curiously enough, England furnishes him, ap- 
parently, with no materials at all. His reasons 
for believing Popular Government to be fragile 



72 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

he finds in the experience of the French with it, 
since 1789 ; of the Spaniards since 1812, and of 
the South American Republics since 1820. Hav- 
ing given some account of the frequent violent 
political changes which have occurred in these 
countries respectively within the above periods, he 



The true reason why the extremely accessible facts which 
I have noticed are so seldom observed and put together is 
that the enthusiasts for Popular Government, particularly 
when it reposes on a wide basis of suffrage, are actuated 
by much the same spirit as the zealots of Legitimism. 
They assumed their principle to have a sanction antece- 
dent to fact. It is not thought to be in any way invali- 
dated by practical violations of it, which merely constitute 
so many more sins against imprescriptible right (p. 20). 

Now I am not an enthusiast for Popular Gov- 
ernment, or for any other form of government. I 
believe politics to be an extremely practical kind 
of business, and that the communities which suc- 
ceed best in it are those which bring least enthu- 
siasm to the conduct of their affairs. Neverthe- 
less, I think I may so far speak for the enthusiasts 
as to suggest that the reason why they do not give 
more attention to Sir Henry Maine's " extremely 
accessible facts," and are not more troubled by 
them, is that they soberly and sincerely believe 
that these facts are irrelevant : that is, that they 



rOPULAIi GOVERNMENT 73 

throw no light whatever on the nature or pros- 
pects of Popular Government. 

The facts are simply that in two or three coun- 
tries which have within the present century set 
up, or attempted to set up, representative institu- 
tions, frequent changes in the executive power 
have been wrought by violence. To make this 
bear directly on the question of fragility we should 
have to be sure that the state of mind which Sir 
Henry makes the first condition of Popular Gov- 
ernment — that is, the belief that the rulers are and 
ought to be the servants of the ruled — prevailed in 
the countries which he cites as examples ; that, in 
short, the setting up and casting down of govern- 
ments which constitute his "extremely accessible 
facts " were the efforts of a community to carry out 
a political theory. We cannot judge of the work- 
ing of any institution, whether monarchy, aristoc- 
racy, or democracy, unless it has its roots in pop- 
ular approval. How monarchy works can only be 
known by seeing it in a community which believes 
in kings. How aristocracy works can only be 
known by seeing it in a community which believes 
in noblemen. How Popular Government works 
can, in like manner, only be known by seeing it in 
a community in which the doctrine on which it is 
based is fully and intelligently held by the bulk of 
the people. 



74 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

To make France and Spain and the Spanish- 
American Republics good examples of the insta- 
bility of Popular Government, Sir Henry Maine 
has to assume that the state of popular opinion 
and feeling which produced and sustains this form 
of government in England or America really exists, 
or has existed during the last half-century, in the 
Latin countries; and he does assume it tacitly, 
but very tacitly indeed. He is almost out of sight 
in his argument before one perceives what a mon- 
strous assumption it is. There is neither in Spain 
nor in Spanish America any dominating political 
theoiy held by the mass of the people ; in fact, 
there is nothing which a political philosopher can 
call a people. There are great landed proprie- 
tors ; there is a powerful clergy ; there is a stand- 
ing army ; there is an ignorant peasantry. There 
arise naturally in this state of things frequent dis- 
putes over the possession of the sovereignty, but 
they are disputes like the War of the Roses, or the 
Seven Years' "War, between those who have and 
those who have not. They illustrate human nat- 
ure in certain conditions of culture, as do most of 
the disorders of history, but they do not illustrate 
any theory of government any more than a fight 
over a captive's ransom in the cave of Greek bri- 
gands. In France, too, it is only since 1870 that 
the view of relations of the government of the 



POrULAR GOVERNMENT 75 

people, on which Sir Henry Maine bases Popular 
Government, can be said to have really existed 
among the mass of the people. There have been 
since 1789 disciples of Eousseau and believers in 
the social contract — both of them great bugbears 
to Sir Henry Maine — in Paris and the other great 
cities, but until the present Kepublic was set up 
the peasantry never thought of controlling the gov- 
ernment, or of treating its members as their ser- 
vants. No matter what its form was, whether 
Constitutional Monarchy, Empire, or Republic, it 
was, in the eyes of provincials, the master of 
France, whose edicts, if they came from the proper 
office, nobody thought of disputing. 

Next let me say that in assuming that the insta- 
bility of government in a given country has and 
can have only one cause — namely, the view 
which the ruled take of their relation to the rulers 
— Sir Henry Maine seems to give countenance to 
a fallacy which is one of the great difficulties of 
modern politics, and which Mr. Mill has lucidly 
exposed as the "Chemical Method" of reasoning 
about political phenomena. Surely the following 
has an important bearing on the value of Sir 
Henry Maine's specific instances, or, as he calls 
them, " extremely accessible facts : " 

In social phenomena the Composition of Causes is the 
Universal Law. Now, the method of philosophizing which 



76 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

may be termed chemical overlooks this fact, and proceeds 
as if the nature of man as an individual were not concerned 
at all, or concerned in a very inferior degree, in the opera- 
tions of human beings in society. All reasoning in poli- 
tics or social affairs, grounded on principles of human nat- 
ure, is objected to by reasoners of this sort, under such 
names as " abstract theory." For the direction of their 
opinions and conduct, they profess to demand, in all cases 
without exception, specific experience. This mode of 
thinking is not only general with practitioners in politics, 
and with that very numerous class who (on a subject which 
no one, however ignorant, thinks himself incompetent to 
discuss) profess to guide themselves by common sense 
rather than by science ; but is often countenanced by per- 
sons with greater pretensions to instruction ; persons who, 
having sufficient acquaintance with books and with the cur- 
rent ideas to have heard that Bacon taught mankind to 
follow experience, and to ground their conclusions on facts 
instead of metaphysical dogmas, think that by treating 
political facts in as directly experimental a method as 
chemical facts, they are showing themselves true Baco- 
nians, and proving their adversaries to be mere syllogizers 
and schoolmen. As, however, the notion of the applica- 
bility of experimental methods to political philosophy can- 
not coexist with any just conception of these methods 
themselves, the kind of arguments from experience which 
the chemical theory brings forth as its fruits (and which 
form the staple, in this country especially, of Parliamen- 
tary and hustings oratory) are such as, at no time since 
Bacon, would have been admitted to be valid in chemistry 
itself, or in any other branch of experimental science. 
They are such as these : that the prohibition of foreign 
commodities must conduce to national wealth, because 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 77 

England has flourished under it, or because countries in 
general which have adopted it have flourished ; that our 
laws, or our internal administration, or our constitution, 
are excellent for a similar reason : and the eternal argu- 
ments from historical examples, from Athens or Rome, 
from the fires in Smithneld or the French Ee volution. I 
will not waste time in contending against modes of argu- 
mentation which no person, with the smallest practice in 
estimating evidence, could possibly be betrayed into ; 
which draw conclusions of general appreciation from a 
single unanalyzed instance, or arbitrarily refer an effect to 
some one among its antecedents, without any process of 
elimination or comparison of instances. — Logic, pp. 458-59. 

I call this fallacy one of the greatest difficulties 
of modern politics because it is the readiest tool 
of demagogues, and to the popular eye the most 
attractive because the easiest solution of pending 
troubles. The most effective argument of the 
American protectionists is, that as the United 
States have prospered under protection, the tariff 
must be the one cause of the prosperity ; that as 
Ireland and Turkey are poor under free trade, 
their condition shows the danger of throwing open 
home markets to foreign producers. So, also, w r e 
are now afflicted with tons of useless silver coin 
owing to the popular belief that the slowness of 
our recovery from the crisis of 1873 was simply 
and solely the demonetization of silver in the same 
year. France and Spain and the Spanish- Ameri- 



78 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

can Republics, says Sir Henry Maine, have popu- 
lar governments — that is, parliaments elected by a 
widely extended suffrage. But they have also fre- 
quent rebellions ; therefore Popular Government 
is both unstable, and the cause of its instability. It 
may be that Popular Government in a given coun- 
try is fragile, but surely we are not justified in as- 
suming that the character, the religion, the culture, 
the manners, the history, and the material sur- 
roundings of the people have nothing to do with 
the security of their political institutions ; or that, 
in considering whether a new form of government 
will suit them, we are not called upon to ask how 
they got on under the old one ; whether, for instance, 
the French were happy and content under abso- 
lute monarchy, and the Spanish-Americans peace- 
ful and industrious under the Viceroys and the 
Bishops. 

So completely does Sir Henry Maine commit 
himself to the Chemical Method that he boldly de- 
clares that " the inferences which might be drawn 
from the stability of the government of the United 
States are much weakened, if not destroyed, by the 
remarkable spectacle furnished by the numerous 
Republics set up from the Mexican border-line to 
the Straits of Magellan." He notices, it is true, the 
objection to his theory drawn from the fact that 
the inhabitants of the Spanish-American Repub- 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 79 

lies are to a great extent of Indian blood and have 
been trained in Koman Catholicism, but he gets 
over it by announcing that " such arguments would 
be intelligible if they were used by persons who 
maintain that a highly special and exceptional 
political education is essential to the successful 
practice of Popular Government ; but they proceed 
from those who believe that there is at least a 
strong presumption in favor of democratic insti- 
tutions everywhere." 

But why must this argument be used only by 
persons who believe that a highly specialized and 
exceptional political education is necessary for the 
successful practice of Popular Government ? Why 
is it not good in the mouths of those who believe 
simply that Indian blood and Roman Catholic 
training are serious obstacles to the practice of 
Popular Government ? Why may it not be used 
by those who believe that the United States Gov- 
ernment is largely indebted for its stability, not 
to the fact that the American people have had a 
highly special and exceptional political education, 
but to the fact that they are mainly of Anglo-Sax- 
on blood, and have been trained in Protestantism ? 
And why, in the name of Aristotle, is an argument 
made unintelligible by the fact that some of those 
who use it also use other arguments which are 
feeble ? Surely, if I sometimes reason a priori 



80 POLITICAL AXD ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

about politics, that does not make my inductive 
reasoning worthless. 

For my part, I think the example of the United 
States all important, even from Sir Henry Maine's 
point of view, for they are the one country in the 
world in which Popular Government, as he defines 
it, really exists. They are the one country, that is 
to say, governed by universal suffrage in which the 
great mass of the voters have a realizing sense of 
the fact that the government is their servant and 
not their master, and that it exists simply to carry 
out the ideas of the " plain people " who compose 
the bulk of the community, and not those of a small 
but more cultivated and more enlightened class ; a 
government, in short, as Lincoln expressed it, " of 
the people, by the people, for the people." It may 
be that their example is sometimes cited by dis- 
putants whom consistency or some other obliga- 
tion forbids to cite it. It may be, too, that infer- 
ences drawn from it would not be good against 
every assailant of Popular Government ; but as 
against Sir Henry Maine they are, as it seems to 
me, good in anybody's hands. He is, in fact, 
estopped by his refusal to take into account any- 
thing but the instability of the government in 
France and Spain and the South American Repub- 
lics, from taking into account anything but the sta- 
bility of the government in the case of the United 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 81 

States. If the Chemical Method be good for one, 
it is good for the other. 

Sir Henry Maine's manner of elucidating the 
effects of universal suffrage controlled by wire- 
pullers on social and intellectual progress is even 
more remarkable than his manner of proving the 
fragility of Popular Government. He says : 

Such a suffrage (a widely extended and universal suffrage) 
is commonly associated with Radicalism ; no doubt amid 
its most certain effects would be the extensive destruction 
of the existing institutions ; but the chances are that in the 
long run it would produce a mischievous form of Conser- 
vatism, and drug society with a potion compared with which 
Eldonine would be a salutary draught. For to what end, 
toward what ideal state, is the process of stamping upon 
law the average opinion of an entire community directed ? 
The end arrived at is identical with that of the Roman 
Catholic Church, which attributes a similar sacredness to 
the average opinion of the Christian world. "Quod 
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus " was the canon of 
Vincent of Lerins. " Securus judicat orbis ten-arum" were 
the words which rang in the ears of Newman, and produced 
such marvellous effects on him. But did any one in his 
senses ever suppose that these were maxims of progress ? 
The principles of legislation at which they point would put 
an end to all social and political activities, and arrest 
everything which has ever been associated with Liberal- 
ism. A moment's reflection will satisfy any competently 
instructed person that this is not too broad a proposition. 
Let him turn over in his mind the great epochs of scientific 
invention and social change during the last two centuries, 



82 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

and consider what would have occurred if universal suf- 
frage had been established at any one of them. Universal 
suffrage which to-day excludes free-trade from the United 
States would certainly have prohibited the spinning-jenny 
and the power-loom. It would certainly have forbidden 
the thrashing-machine. It would have forbidden the adop- 
tion of the Gregorian Calendar, and would have restored 
the Stuarts (p. 36). 

A few sentences before this he has acknowledged 
that the world has had only a very brief experience 
of wide suffrage — that is, about fifty years in the 
United States and about twenty in France — but, 
brief as it is, it ought to have furnished him with 
specific instances in support of this very dark view 
of the future of West European society. He was 
able to infer from the example of France and Spain 
and the Spanish- American Republics that Popular 
Government would be fragile. It seems to me 
that he ought to have been able to infer from the 
same source that it would be hostile to civilization. 
Strange to say, however, on this point he does not 
argue ; he contents himself with prophesying, and 
it is one of the commonplaces of rhetoric that you 
cannot refute a prophet. Perhaps it would be 
more accurate to say that he guesses, using the 
word in its English rather than in its American 
sense. For what other name can we give to an as- 
sertion that " the chances are " that, if a certain 
thing had happened long before it did happen, a 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 83 

certain other thing would have happened, which, 
as a matter of fact, has never happened at all ? In 
no place has universal suffrage " put an end to all 
social and political activities or arrested everything 
which has been associated with Liberalism." In 
no place has it ever shown a tendency to do so. 
In no place has it ever done anything like prohib- 
iting a spinning-jenny or the power-loom or the 
thrashing-machine, or preventing the adoption of 
the Gregorian Calendar. Nevertheless, Sir Henry 
Maine makes the extremely broad proposition that 
it would have done so had it had the opportunity. 
I have searched as carefully as I can for the basis 
of these very extraordinary deductions. As well 
as I can make out, it consists simply in his opinion 
that in a democratic community the embodiment 
of public opinion in legislation would result in 
giving the law the sanctity which in the Catholic 
Church is attributed to the consensus of the Chris- 
tian world on points of doctrine. Admitting it to 
be true that the general opinion embodied in a 
statute would give the statute in democratic eyes 
the sacredness of a Catholic dogma, whence do we 
draw the conclusion that it would also have the 
permanence of a dogma ? 

There is, in fact, just enough evidence to show (Sir 
Henry Maine says) that even now there is a marked antag- 
onism between democratic opinion and scientific truth ap- 



84 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

plied to human societies. The central seat in all political 
economy was from the first occupied by the Theory of 
Population. This theory has now been generalized by Mr. 
Darwin and his followers, and, stated as the principle of 
the survival of the fittest, it has become the central truth 
of all biological science. Yet it is evidently disliked by 
the multitude and thrust into the background by those 
whom the multitude permits to lead it. It has long been 
intensely unpopular in France and on the continent of 
Europe, and among ourselves proposals for recognizing it 
through the relief of distress by emigration are visibly 
being supplanted by schemes founded on the assumption 
that, through legislative experiments on society, a given 
space of land may always be made to support in comfort 
the population which from historical causes has come to be 
settled on it (p. 37). 

As "just enough evidence" to show that there 
is even now " a marked antagonism between dem- 
ocratic opinion and scientific truth as applied to 
human societies," the above is very remarkable. 
I believe the doctrine of the survival of the fittest 
has, as a matter of fact, met with even fiercer op- 
position from the religious well-to-do middle class 
and from the clergy than from the unfortunate 
"multitude." But it is a doctrine which must 
needs be unpopular — if unpopular means disagree- 
able — with all but the very successful, that is, with 
the great majority of the human race. The sur- 
vival of the fittest has ever been and must ever be 
an odious sight to the unfit or the less fit, who see 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 85 

that they cannot survive. Sir Henry Maine's re- 
proach, that they do not accept it cheerfully re- 
minds one of Frederick the Great's savage reproof 
to his flying troops, "Hunde, wollte ihr ewig 
leben ? " In asking the multitude to take to it 
kindly, Sir Henry asks something which has 
always been beyond human powers. There is no 
doctrine with which the race is more familiar in 
practice than the doctrine that the strongest must 
have the best of it, which is really Darwin's doc- 
trine expressed in terms of politics. The progress 
of civilization under all forms of government has 
consisted simply in making such changes in the 
environment of the multitude as will increase the 
number of the fittest. That it has been well to 
strive for this end ; that it has been well to try to 
make a country like England a place in which 
twenty-eight millions can dwell in comfort on soil 
which seventy years ago only supported ten mill- 
ions in comparative misery, has been for ages the 
opinion of the wisest and best men under the old 
monarchies. Possibly they were wrong. Possibly 
it ought to have been the policy of rulers not only 
to see that the fittest survived, but that their 
number was kept down. But is it not asking too 
much of the multitude to ask them to take a totally 
new view of the conditions of man's struggle with 
nature ? 



86 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

The great aim of the political art has hither- 
to been to protect man in some degree from the 
remorseless working of the laws of the physical 
universe, to save him from cold, from heat, from 
savage beasts, from the unwillingness of the earth 
to yield him her fruits and the sea its fish. All its 
successes have to some extent increased the num- 
ber of the fittest. It has filled West Europe with 
a population which conservative observers like Sir 
Henry Maine two centuries ago would certainly 
have declared it incapable of maintaining. Can 
we possibly expect Democracy to give up the game 
as soon as it comes into power, and bid the weak- 
lings of the race prepare for extinction? Emigra- 
tion, which he treats as an acceptance of the Dar- 
winian doctrine, is, of course, in reality simply a 
transfer of the struggle for survival to another 
arena. The law of population works everywhere, 
and with increasing severity, other things being 
equal, as the population increases. Sending the 
unfit to New Zealand or Dakota is not a whit more 
scientific than sending them to till English moors. 
There is no escape for them anywhere from the 
battle with the fittest ; but any abandonment of 
the effort to protract their existence and make it 
more tolerable would mean the stoppage of civil- 
ization itself. Democracy may make mistakes in 
this work, and may attempt more than it can ac- 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 87 

complish, but energy in the work and devotion to 
it is after all what distinguishes a civilized com- 
munity from a savage one. There is no more 
reason why the bulk of the race should fold its 
arms in the presence of the theory of population 
than in the presence of the great fact of mortality. 
How many people a given piece of land will main- 
tain and comfort, whether only the number settled 
on it by "historical causes" or a larger one, is 
something which can be only ascertained by intel- 
ligent experiment. All causes, too, which settle a 
man on a farm become " historical " after a while ; 
but whether it is well for him to remain there is 
something only to be learned by experience. The 
theory of population does not necessarily prescribe 
emigration when people begin to find it hard to get 
a living off the land on which they were born, or 
on which they have settled, but it does prescribe 
better modes of cultivation and smaller families. 

I am not prepared to argue that democratic 
societies will always accept the conclusions of 
science with meekness and submission. One 
sees, I admit, in our own time a good deal to war- 
rant the fear that democratic ignorance will fight 
unpleasant and inconvenient truths with the per- 
tinacity with which monarchical and aristocratic 
ignorance has always fought them ; and that they 
will have to owe their triumph in the future, as 



88 POLITICAL AXD ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

they liave owed it in the past, not to any particu- 
lar distribution of the political sovereignty, but to 
the intellectual impulse which has carried the 
race out of the woods and the caves, and given it 
its great discoverers and inventors. 

But I am very curious to know why Sir Henry 
Maine should have overlooked the experience of 
the only really democratic community now ex- 
isting, that of the Northern States of the Ameri- 
can Union, on this point. As a matter of fact, 
there never has been any society in which new 
discoveries and inventions and new theories of the 
art of living have been received with so much 
readiness as in these States ; and they are the 
countries in which the dominating opinion is most 
distinctly that of the multitude, in which legisla- 
tion most distinctly embodies both the prejudices 
and weakness of the multitude, and in which 
there is least respect for authority. I think I 
might safely appeal to American men of science 
to say whether they do not suffer in reputation 
and influence with the people, for not making 
more and greater calls on their faith or credulity ; 
or, in other words, for their slowness rather than 
for their haste in making and accepting dis- 
coveries. The fertility of Americans in inven- 
tions — that is, in the production of new machines 
and new processes — great as it is, is not so re- 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 89 

markable as the eagerness with which the people 
receive them and use them. The large number of 
medical quacks who infest the country, and their 
great success in the sale of their nostrums — the 
like of which I think can be seen nowhere 
else — is undoubtedly due to a sort of impa- 
tience with the caution and want of enterprise 
of the regular practitioners. The kind of fame 
which came to Edison after he had made some 
improvements in the electric light and invented 
the phonograph, was a very good illustration of 
the respect of American people for the novel 
and the marvellous. For a good while he was 
hailed as a man to whom any problem in physics 
would be simple, and he was consulted on a variety 
of subjects to which he had given no attention, 
such as the means of diminishing the noise of the 
trains on the elevated railroads in the streets of this 
city. In fact, for a year or two, he held the posi- 
tion — doubtless to his own amusement — of a 
"medicine man," to whom any mystery was easy. 
Are there, then, no signs in this American 
democracy of tendencies in the direction which 
Sir Henry Maine predicts or guesses at — that is, 
of the emancipation of the people from the con- 
trol or influence of science, or scientific men, or 
of a disposition to go back to the rule of thumb in 
the art of living ? As I am not posing here as a 



90 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

champion of Popular Government, or indeed as 
anything but a humble inquirer into the reasons 
why Sir Henry Maine wrote his book, I can have 
no difficulty in answering this question with can- 
dor and explicitness. 

No observer of American politics can deny that, 
with regard to matters which can become the sub- 
ject of legislation, the American voter listens with 
extreme impatience to anything which has the air 
of instruction ; but the reason is to be found not 
in his dislike of instruction so much as his dislike 
in the political field of anything which savors of 
superiority. The passion for equality is one of 
the very strongest influences in American politics. 
This is so fully recognized now by politicians that 
self - depreciation, even in the matter of knowl- 
edge, has become one of the ways of commending 
one's self to the multitude, which even the fore- 
most men of both parties do not disdain. In 
talking on such subjects as the currency, with a 
view of enlightening the people, skilful orators 
are very careful to repudiate all pretence of know- 
ing anything more about the matter than their 
hearers. The speech is made to wear as far as 
possible the appearance of being simply a repro- 
duction of things with which the audience is just 
as familiar as the speaker. Nothing is more fatal 
to a stump orator than an air of superior wisdom 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 91 

on any subject. He has, if he means to persuade, 
to keep carefully, in outward seeming at all 
events, on the same intellectual level as those 
whom he is addressing. Orators of a demagogic 
turn, of course, push this caution to its extreme, 
and often affect ignorance, and boast of the small- 
ness of the educational opportunities enjoyed by 
them in their youth, and of the extreme difficulty 
they had in acquiring even the little they know. 
There is nothing, in fact, people are less willing 
to tolerate in a man who seeks office at their hands 
than any sign that he does not consider himself as 
belonging to the same class as the bulk of the 
voters — that either birth, or fortune, or education 
has taken him out of sympathy with them, or 
caused him, in any sense, to look down on them. 

That this has a tendency to make political 
speaking in this country, especially of late years, 
remarkably uninstructive, uninteresting, and a poor 
educational agency, there is no denying. Anyone 
who judged of the capacity and intelligence of 
the American voters by the pabulum supplied to 
them on the stump would certainly be excusable 
in taking a dark view of the future of American 
democracy. 

The truth seems to be that with regard to all 
matters within the field of politics the new democ- 
racy is extremely sensitive about any doubts of 



93 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESS A YS 

its competency. It will not suffer any question, 
or sign of question, of its full capacity to deal 
with any matter which calls for legislation. It is 
ready enough to base legislation on investigations 
and reports ; but the investigations and reports 
must be made in its name and by its authority 
through what it calls " practical men " as distin- 
guished from scientific or professorial men. By 
practical men, it means men engaged in some 
industrial or money - making pursuit, like the 
bulk of the community, and making no pretence 
to book-learning or theoretical knowledge. What 
men of this class, who have succeeded in busi- 
ness, say on any subject calling for political ac- 
tion, counts for much more in the United States 
with the voters than what specialists or learned 
men say. There is, in fact, an inordinate re- 
spect for the opinions on all subjects of "suc- 
cessful business men" — that is, men who from 
small beginnings have made fortunes by their 
own exertions. But this is not more wonderful in 
an industrial community than the reverence in a 
military community for a great soldier — than the 
prolonged belief in England, for instance, in the 
political wisdom of the Duke of Wellington for 
many years after Waterloo. 

With matters of a quasi-scientific kind, like the 
tariff, for instance, or the currency, on which the 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 93 

opinions of theorists are extremely important and 
" practical men " very likely to be wrong, this 
habit of excluding science from all say in the 
political arena, is undoubtedly very unfortunate. 
But it does not have the effect that Sir Henry 
Maine would expect from it. It sometimes leads 
to the embodiment in legislation of gross errors 
and delusions, but it never leads to the conver- 
sion of an error or delusion into a sacred 
dogma. It leads to costly and useless experimen- 
tation and to the trial of schemes which have 
failed a hundred times before in other places and 
ages. It is rare, indeed, that an economic or 
other fallacy connected with legislation, which 
has once taken hold of the popular mind in this 
country, can be overthrown by the attacks of au- 
thority or of historical experience. In fact, the 
intervention of the professors to expose it, is very 
apt to hasten its conversion into law, if only for 
the purpose of showing the literary men that they 
must not meddle in politics. 

But the experiment once tried, there is nothing 
anywhere like the readiness of the public here to 
acknowledge failure in the frankest way. The 
orators and editors go through the process of 
" owning up," with extraordinary, and some might 
say cynical, cheerfulness. Some of the most 
furious newspaper advocates of Bland's Silver Bill 



94 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

are now its most strenuous opponents. Every- 
thing which the theorists predicted of its working 
has come to pass, but it would never have done to 
allow theorists to suppose that their talk would 
turn the people from its purpose, or influence 
law-making. In truth, that most marked charac- 
teristic of the American commercial character — 
its readiness to abandon things which do not pay, 
and its unwillingness to spend any time crying 
over spilt milk — shows itself just as prominently in 
politics as in business. There is not the smallest 
sign of the bigoted conservatism which Sir Henry 
Maine looks for. The legislative history of every 
State in the Union is full of illustrations of the 
people's openness to conviction, provided the 
conviction be wrought by processes which they 
can understand. Nothing is sacred in America, 
and nothing elicits so much ridicule as an attempt 
to put anything or any person into the category of 
the unchangeable or unapproachable. 

But, outside of politics, authority occupies a 
very different place. The scientific or literary 
man who addresses the people without any design 
of directly influencing their political action, or 
making his opinions felt in legislation, nowhere 
receives a more attentive hearing. The success of 
instructive lectures in this country, though greater 
some years ago than now, is still greater than any- 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 95 

where else in the world. Scientific men, working 
in their own fields, are nowhere so widely known 
and respected by the masses. I do not need to 
speak of the wide diffusion in the United States 
of the reading habit. A large proportion of it — 
by far too large a portion of it perhaps — is de- 
voted to newspapers, which have their bad side, 
on which I will not dwell here. But they have 
one effect which makes any growth of ignorant 
conservatism, or any barbarous dislike of novelty, 
simply impossible. They fill every corner of the 
land with some knowledge of what is going on 
everywhere else. They tell the people something 
about every famous man in the world, and about 
the things which have made him famous. They 
familiarize them with every new idea or discovery. 
They, in short, prevent mental stagnation. By 
keeping people curious about the world outside 
their village, they keep them in a state of mental 
receptivity. 

I might illustrate these things at considerable 
length, if I had not taken up so much space. But 
I shall, in closing, point out that one of Sir Henry 
Maine's examples of popular bigotry — the hostility 
of the United States to free trade — shows a sin- 
gular ignorance of the exact nature of the tariff 
controversy in this country. The tariff is not a 
purely fiscal question here, and for that reason the 



96 POLITICAL AXD ECOXOJIIC ESSAYS 

difficulty of getting Americans to take a scientific 
view of it is greatly increased. 

In the first place, the possession of a continent 
containing nearly every variety of soil, climate, 
and product greatly diminishes the force with 
which the free-trade doctrine, that trade consists 
in the interchange of the results of special natural 
advantages, strikes the Ameiican mind. No other 
country can say that it finds within its own bor- 
ders the means, as far as soil and climate are 
concerned, of producing nearly everything it buys 
from foreigners. In the next place, the prohibition 
of customs duties between the States has given a 
larger area to free trade here than exists anywhere 
else, and has thus in a remarkable degree lessened 
the pinch of protection. Lastly, the enormous im- 
migration — nearly a million a year — of consumers 
and producers, in the very prime of life, is con- 
stantly making new markets, which for many years 
postponed the glut which is now putting the high 
tariff in so much peril. The effect of this, in im- 
peding the free-trade agitation, has been very like 
the effect of opening a small foreign State every 
year to American goods. In short, anybody who 
imagines that the free-trade argument presents 
itself to the American voter in the neat compact 
shape in which Cobden and Bright were able to 
offer it to the British public in 1846, or in which 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 97 

Fawcett was able to offer it in 1880, is greatly mis- 
taken. The American voter, though much deluded 
about the tariff, is not deluded to the same degree 
or in the same way as the British fair-trader. He 
has never had a notion that, as people say here, 
he could lift himself by his own boot-straps, or 
make money by swapping jack-knives. His vast 
reserve of waste lands has always been in his 
mind, something for a tariff to work on which no 

other nation possessed. 
7 



SOME POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS 
OF THE TAKIFF 

A takiff, in so far as it is intended to be pro- 
tective, is a tax levied on the community to indem- 
nify a certain number of persons for their losses in 
carrying on certain kinds of business ; or, rather, 
if any one likes it better, to furnish them with a 
fair profit in certain kinds of business. There is, 
perhaps, no tax which may not be properly sub- 
mitted to the popular judgment, if it be submitted 
in its true shape, without disguise. This requires 
a distinct definition both of its object and of its 
amount. This rule is rigidly applied to all taxes 
except the protective tax. It is applied rigidly in 
all appropriations for the expenses of the Govern- 
ment, such as the salaries of its civil and military 
servants, the cost of the navy, of fortifications, of 
the river and harbor improvements, of the pub- 
lic buildings, of subventions to railroads, and of 
the redemption of the public debt. For none of 
these things is an appropriation either left in- 
definite in amount or hidden away in another for 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 99 

entirely different objects. But in voting funds for 
the creation or promotion of certain branches of 
industry, the rule is totally disregarded. 

In the first place, the money levied on the tax- 
payer for this purpose is mixed up with the money 
levied for the general expenses of the Government. 
How much of the taxes goes for the protection 
of native industry is never known or specified, 
and no pains are taken to find it out. One may 
really approve of a protective tax, and yet be totally 
unable to approve of any tax levied in this way 
for any purpose whatever. Granting that it is ex- 
pedient for the Government to spend money in the 
maintenance or the promotion of the iron manu- 
facture, for example, it must be expedient, also, 
for the public to know the exact amount which it 
costs annually ; just as it is expedient that the pub- 
lic should know exactly how much the army and 
navy costs, or how much the annual improvement of 
rivers and harbors costs. No view, however broad, 
of the province of government can furnish an ex- 
cuse for concealing the expense of any great 
national undertaking. The question " how much," 
is a question Avhich every taxpayer has a right to 
ask as regards all branches of the public expendi- 
ture, and which every Secretary of the Treasury 
ought to be able to answer. There is not a single 
good reason for concealing the national expenditure 



100 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

in protection, any more than for concealing the na- 
tional expenditure in anything else. But there is 
no trace of this expenditure in the national accounts. 
Everybody knows that it must be large, but nobody 
knows how large. The only sources of information 
on this subject are the guesses made in free-trade 
books and pamphlets, which, of course, possess 
but little authority in the popular eye. The de- 
bates between free-traders and protectionists on 
this point are the most bewildering part of the 
controversy. Every now and then a free-trader, 
home or foreign, undertakes to foot up the amount 
of the contributions which American consumers, 
and especially the farmers, make to the mainten- 
ance of the various branches of domestic indus- 
try. Such attempts always excite great indigna- 
tion among protectionists. A pamphlet containing 
calculations of this sort, by an Englishman named 
Montgredien, was published in this country a few 
years ago, and has been denounced by various pro- 
tectionist writers with great bitterness, as if it 
were a sort of impertinent prying into somebody's 
private affairs. I dare say it was incorrect. I do 
not, indeed, see how such calculations can come 
anywhere near correctness. But what a curious 
state of mind about the national finances that is, 
which treats as illicit all efforts to discover the 
exact amount of the national outlay, on what is, 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 101 

admittedly, an object of the highest national im- 
portance. 

Next, it must be said that any fund of large 
amount, raised and distributed in this way, must 
of necessity prove a corruption fund. By this, I 
do not mean a fund distributed in bribes to indi- 
viduals or organizations, but a fund the existence 
of which must be constantly present to the mind 
of the lazy, the improvident, or incompetent, as 
something to fall back on if the worst come to the 
worst. Suppose the national appropriations for 
the purpose of protecting manufacturing industry 
were made in the ordinary way by a distinct vote 
of Congress ; were made, for instance, as the appro- 
priations for the promotion of the carrying trade — 
the steamship subsidies, as they are called — are 
made, in the shape of an annual maximum sum. 
Suppose this sum were paid over to the corpora- 
tions, or individuals, engaged in each manufacture, 
on their giving proof that they were carrying on a 
bona -fide business. Suppose that to each were 
given as much as would meet the loss, as shown by 
his books, incurred by him in competing with for- 
eigners in the home markets. I am not advocating 
this. Any one can see its difficulties. I acknowl- 
edge how much less troublesome it is to protect by 
levying duties on foreign goods at the port of entry. 
But the political objections to the protective sys- 



102 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

tern, as now administered, cannot be made so clear 
in any way as by inquiring how the plan of dis- 
tributing the money directly by the public Treasury 
would work. 

The measure of each manufacturer's needs would, 
of course, be the amount lost in his business 
through foreign competition. It would hardly be 
possible to restrict the number of participators 
in the bounty, because one of its great objects 
would be the multiplication of manufactures. We 
should have to invite as many people as possible 
to set up mills and furnaces, and then to come to us 
for help. But see what an amount of inspection 
we should need to prevent the distribution of the 
fund becoming a gross job. It would be impossi- 
ble, for instance, to pay the subsidy or indemnity 
on a simple statement of the loss sustained. "We 
should have to inquire how the loss was sustained ; 
whether really by foreign competition, or by lax 
or inefficient or dishonest methods of doing busi- 
ness; whether by simple misfortune, or insuffi- 
ciency of capital, or want of experience. We 
would never consent that the Treasury should fur- 
nish insurance against loss from any cause what- 
ever ; that the same measure should be dealt out 
to the idle, the improvident, and the slow, as to 
the industrious, the energetic, and the ingenious. 
No government would undertake to help in the 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 103 

same degree, through direct subsidies, every one 
who chose to go into the iron or cotton business. It 
would investigate and discriminate. It would not 
treat all men's complaints as equally respectable. 
Indiscriminate protection, if it were given directly, 
would speedily be felt to have all the evils of in- 
discriminate charity. A manufacturer who said, " I 
am not able to go on with my business and must 
have more state aid," would be met in the same 
way as a man who said, " I must have relief, be- 
cause I have got no money." The latter, before 
receiving relief, would surely be asked : " Why 
have you no money ? Is it because you are lazy, 
or because you are unfortunate ? " In like man- 
ner, the manufacturer who demanded more protec- 
tion, simply because the amount received was not 
sufficient to save him from bankruptcy, would be 
asked : " Why is the amount you receive insuffi- 
cient ? Is it the fault of the market, or your own 
lack of fitness for the business in which you have 
engaged? In the former case you are entitled 
to relief. In the latter it would be a waste of the 
taxpayers' money, and a waste of your own life, to 
start you again." 

That such a system could long prevail in any 
country without damage to the moral constitution 
of those who were benefited by it, all experience 
of human nature forbids us to expect. The effect 



104 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

of the possession of money, or of a rich father, on 
a young professional man, is well known. It is 
only the men of very strong character who make 
their mark in spite of it. In all walks in life, in- 
deed, it is generally those who have burnt their 
bridges who make the stiffest fight. Manufacturers 
would need to be more than human to make the 
very best use of their faculties, while knowing 
that they had in Congress a protector of boundless 
wealth and indulgence, who, when the allowance 
was exhausted, asked only one question, namely, 
how much more was needed ? 

Looking at the protective system, as it now ex- 
ists, from the side of legislation, the political ob- 
jections to it under our form of government are 
still stronger. The only governments fitted to 
deal with votes of money of an indefinite amount, 
for an ill-defined purpose, if any be fitted, are 
governments of the parliamentary type, in which 
the finances are managed by a responsible minister, 
and all the appropriations collected in a systematic 
whole called the budget. Even in such hands, the 
support of industry, through indirect taxation, is 
open to immense abuse. But such a minister, re- 
sponsible to the public for the whole financial sys- 
tem, can make some attempt to reconcile the con- 
flicting claims of the great industries. Under our 
system — the presidential system, as it is called— 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 105 

nobody in particular is responsible for the financial 
scheme of the year. There is, in fact, no official 
scheme, in the strict sense of the term, submitted 
to Congress. The Secretary of the Treasury puts 
into his report a mass of multifarious information 
about the public finances, but the recommendations 
with which he follows it up are rarely heeded by 
the Legislature. The real work of what is called 
in other countries a Minister of Finance, is done 
by a committee of the House of Representatives, 
which makes the first draft of the appropriation 
bills. But these bills, including the tariff bill, 
never pass the House in the shape in which they 
are drawn up, or in anything approaching to it. 
Each member feels himself fully entitled to pro- 
pose, and, if he can, to carry, modifications in them ; 
so that when a bill is finally passed it is general- 
ly impossible for any one, in or out of the House, 
to say who its author is. So numerous are the 
influences which are brought to bear on the fram- 
ing of it, that the most powerful of them is hardly 
ever known. The committee is beset by hundreds 
of manufacturers from all parts of the country, 
representing every variety of industry, and each 
claiming to be the final authority on his own sub- 
ject. Each, too, demands that Congress shall 
either alter, or shall not alter, the duty on some 
particular article of foreign importation, and sup- 



106 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ports his demand with an array of figures, the 
correctness of which nobody attempts to dispute, 
if for no other reason, for want of time. Failure 
to influence the committee, too, rarely discourages 
any tariff lobbyist. He transfers his labors to the 
House, and attacks the bill through individual 
members, who, being generally much more igno- 
rant of the subject than the members of the com- 
mittee, fall an easy pre}' to him. The general re- 
sult is apt to be that the bill, as finally passed, has 
but little, if any, resemblance to the bill as it is- 
sued from the committee-room. It is often, when 
examined, found to be something very different in 
its operation, not only from what its first projec- 
tors intended it to be, but from what everybody 
else, at the end, thought that it really was. There 
is hardly a more pitiable spectacle in politics than 
the vexation and amazement of the country, after 
a new tariff bill has been passed, over the dis- 
covery that nobody can tell what its effect on in- 
dustry is likely to prove. 

There is, however, one other reason of the un- 
fitness of Congress for the proper working of our 
protective system besides the absence of a re- 
sponsible ministry charged with the management 
of the finances. It has been the American policy 
from the beginning, and a wise policy, to provide, 
by paying the members, that the legislatures of 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 10? 

the country shall be a fair representation of the 
plain people who compose the bulk of the popula- 
tion. The bulk of the population has but little 
money, but is keenly alive to the use of money, and 
eagerly engaged in the pursuit of it. We send to 
the Legislature, both State and Federal, men who 
are generally poor and generally honest when they 
go there, but not unwilling to be rich if a respecta- 
ble occasion offers, and are very apt to have their 
imagination touched by the history and condition 
of millionaires. In plain and simple communities, 
such as two or three of the New England States still 
remain, in which capital is scarce and great capi- 
talists unknown, the relation of these legislators 
to their constituency leaves little to be desired. 
But in States in which great accumulations of 
wealth have taken place, in which capitalists 
frequently have great favors to ask of the State, 
and in which legislators are constantly called on 
to deal with measures which contain, or are thought 
to contain, as Johnson said of the Thrale brew- 
ery, " the potentiality of growing rich beyond the 
dreams of avarice," these relations leave a great 
deal to be desired. The belief of the great capi- 
talists in the venality of legislators in some 
States, if not in many, is well known, and is one 
of the most unpleasant political phenomena of the 
day. In fact, they make hardly an attempt to 



108 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

conceal it. I have never talked with one who had 
ever found himself in the power of a State Legis- 
lature, or had to ask anything of it which seriously 
affected his interests, who was afraid to avow his 
belief that the members were venal, or who did 
not pretend to hold proofs of their venality ; who 
had not stories to tell, either of his having to 
pay in order to get what he sought, or of his hav- 
ing to pay in order to escape a tax on what he 
possessed already. In the New York Legislature, 
certainly, the practice of introducing bills simply 
for the purpose of frightening rich men, or " strik- 
ing them," as it is called, is by no means uncom- 
mon. Nor is the practice unknown of delaying 
the passage of measures in which rich men are 
interested, until they are forced to inquire what it 
is that stops the way. One hears the same stories 
for all States in which there are large corpora- 
tions or great capitalists exposed in any manner 
to legislative action. Doubtless there is in all this 
much exaggeration, but any one who is determined 
to gain his ends with the State government through 
corruption, is pretty sure, if he cannot succeed, at 
all events to find many ways of spending money 
in the attempt. 

All this is an illustration of the growth of a 
political evil which is both novel and peculiar to 
our time. In all past states of society with which 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 109 

we have any acquaintance, the governing class has 
been the wealthy class. The military or feudal 
states were ruled by the men who had the most 
land. The great commercial republics, like Venice 
and Genoa, were ruled by the men who had the 
most money. It is in our day and generation, and 
in this country, that the Government has for the 
first time, both in its legislative and administrative 
branches, passed into the hands of the poor, in a 
rich community. I say the poor in a rich com- 
munity, for there have been states before now in 
which poor men filled all the offices; but these 
were states, such as some of the Swiss cantons, in 
which the rulers and ruled were, as regards this 
world's goods, pretty much on a level, and in 
which the absence of temptation made it easy for 
everybody to be virtuous. Here, on the other hand, 
we are trying the novel experiment of governing 
a commercial community, during a period of 
rapidly growing wealth, by the instrumentality of 
men without fortunes. This will probably, here- 
after, continue, for better, for worse, to be the 
democratic way. No other way is possible. The 
rule of the many must always be the rule of the 
comparatively poor, and, in this age of the world, 
the poor have ceased to be content with their pov- 
erty. They seek wealth, and, in times when 
wealth is accumulating rapidly, they seek it 



110 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

eagerly. We cannot change this state of things. 
We must face the problem as it is presented to us. 
That problem is, I do not hesitate to say, the great 
problem of government in every civilized country 
— how to keep wealth in subjection to law ; how 
to prevent its carrying elections, putting its creat- 
ures on the judicial bench, or putting fleets and 
armies in motion in order to push usurious bonds 
up to par. 

There is only one way of meeting this difficulty. 
We cannot at will put down corruption by a sud- 
den increase of human virtue. In other words, 
we cannot protect legislators against wealthy spec- 
ulators, by making them either suddenly purer, or 
more contented. The way to arm them against 
temptation is to leave them as little as possible to 
sell of the things which capitalists are eager to buy. 

I do not mean to say that the tariff has pro- 
duced, or is producing, definite, ascertainable, or 
provable corruption, in Congress ; that is, that man- 
ufacturers go down to Washington and pay mem- 
bers for raising the duty on this, or not lowering 
it on that. But I do say that the state of things 
is vicious through which Congress has the chance 
every year of increasing or lessening the incomes 
of thousands of rich men, of threatening to ruin 
great industrial enterprises or largely to increase 
their profits, and this through changes in legisla- 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 111 

tion so slight as not to be perceptible to the great 
mass of the public, yet so intricate as to be com- 
prehensible only to a small portion of it. Every 
time the tariff comes under discussion — and it 
comes under it every year — hundreds of wealthy 
corporations or individuals either fear a loss or 
expect a gain. This puts every member of Con- 
gress in the position toward them of a possible 
enemy or a possible benefactor ; in the one case to 
be bought off, in the other to be rewarded. The 
lobby which looks after the tariff every win- 
ter in the protectionists' interest is not com- 
posed of speculative economists, occupied with 
the effect of legislation on the general weal. It is 
composed of shrewd, practical business men, en- 
gaged in procuring or hindering legislation which 
will increase or diminish their bank account by an 
amount which they can readily figure out, and 
which, if called on, they freely submit to the com- 
mittees. 

The protectionist answer to much of what is 
said with regard to the changeableness of congres- 
sional policy about the tariff is, chiefly, that if the 
tariff were not attacked incessantly by free-traders 
and their allies, in one disguise or another, these 
changes would never take place. If, in short, the 
people who are hostile to the protective system 
would refrain from criticising the tariff in which it 



112 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

is embodied, there would be as much stability in 
the policy of the Government with regard to im- 
port duties as any one could desire. Unfortu- 
nately, however, tariffs have to be made for the 
community, such as it is, and not as protectionists 
would desire to see it. There has always been in 
this country a considerable body of persons who 
are opposed to any protection at all ; there is an- 
other body, also considerable, opposed to high 
protection. As long as speech is free they 
will continue to exert an influence, more or less 
pronounced, upon Congress and the voters. If 
they do not always have their way in legislation, 
they are always able, at every election, to diffuse 
among manufacturers the fear that they will have 
it. The effect of this fear on business is, manu- 
facturers say, almost as prejudicial as active legis- 
lation. 

The problem which protectionists have to solve, 
therefore, touching the relations of the Government 
to industry in this country, would seem to be the 
production of a tariff which nobody will attack — a 
very difficult task, we must all admit, if it is to be 
such a tariff as extreme protectionists really desire. 
As long as there exists, about the amount of protec- 
tion needed, the doubt and mystery which we now 
witness ; as long as the classes for whose protec- 
tion the tariff is intended are as numerous and as 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 113 

clamorous as they now are, it will be impossible 
to satisfy them all by any protective tariff what- 
ever. There is only one rule known to us by which 
a tariff can really be measured and defended. If 
the principle of raising duties for revenue only 
were once adopted, every one would know at a 
glance how high the tariff ought to be. There 
might be disputes about the distribution of its 
burdens among different commodities, but there 
would be none about the sum it ought to bring in. 
If there were in any year a surplus, every one 
would agree that the tariff ought to be lowered. 
If there were a deficit, every one would agree that 
it ought to be raised. We should thus, at least, get 
rid of the perennial contention about the weight of 
the duties, and we should no longer be dependent 
for stability on the wisdom of Congress. 

Now, let me consider another, and, from a social 
point of view, perhaps the most important, aspect 
of the tariff question. Can any one find, in the 
work of any American author, or in the speech of 
any American orator — I mean, of the free States 
— prior to the civil war, any intimation that we 
should have, fully developed on American soil, 
within the present century, what has long been 
known in Europe as " the labor question ? " Of 
course, we can all recall that sometime famous let- 
ter of Lord Macaulay's, in which he predicted the 



114 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

speedy triumph in this country of poverty over 
property, and the periodical division among the 
have-nots of the goods and chattels of the haves. 
But some of us can remember, too, the mocking 
and proud incredulity with which that dismal pre- 
diction was received. He was told, in hundreds of 
newspaper articles, that European experience fur- 
nished no proper materials for forecasting the 
economical future of the United States ; that no 
such division of classes as he foresaw could take 
place here. I do not need to say that his predic- 
tions have not been fulfilled, and are never likely 
to be. I am one of those, too, who believe firmly 
that property will always, in every country, be 
able to take care of itself. It will always have the 
superiority in physical force, as well as in intelli- 
gence on its side. The great bulk of the population 
is, in every country, and above all, in this, composed 
of those who have property or expect to have it ; 
and so it will always be, as long as our civilization 
lasts. But certainly, all the answers to Macaulay 
have not stood the test of time and experience. In 
1860 nobody here was seriously troubled by the 
condition or expectations of the working classes. 
In fact, Americans were not in the habit of think- 
ing of working-men as a class at all. An American 
citizen who wrought with his hands in any calling 
was looked on, like other American citizens, as a 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 115 

man who had his fortunes in his own keeping, and 
whose judgment alone decided in what manner 
they could be improved. Nobody thought of him 
as being in a special degree the protege of the 
State. In fact, the idea that he had a special and 
peculiar claim on State protection was generally 
treated as a piece of Gallic folly, over which Anglo- 
Saxons ?ould well afford to smile. There was no 
mention of the free laborer in political platforms at 
that day, except as an illustration to Southern 
slave-holders of the blessings of which their pride 
and folly deprived their own society. 

We have changed all this very much. Under 
the stimulation of the war tariff, not only has there 
been an enormous amount of capital invested in 
industrial enterprises of various sorts ; not only 
have mills and furnaces and mines and protected 
interests of all sorts greatly multiplied, but there 
has appeared in great force, and for the first time 
on American soil, the dependent, State-managed 
laborer of Europe, who declines to take care of 
himself in the old American fashion. When he is 
out of work, or does not like his work, he looks 
about, and asks his fellow-citizens sullenly, if not 
menacingly, what they are going to do about it. He 
has brought with him, too, what is called " the labor 
problem," probably the most un-American of all 
the problems which American society has to work 



116 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

over to-day. The American pulpit and the Ameri- 
can press are now hammering away at it steadily. 
Commissions, both State and Federal, are nearly 
every year appointed to collect facts bearing on it, 
and working-men are invited to come before them 
and explain it. Popular attention to it is stimulated 
by occasional riots and huge strikes, in which thou- 
sands take part, and which every now and then 
strain to the uttermost the State powers of protect- 
ing life and property. Its leading features are, 
however, well known. The rate of wages paid in 
the protective industries is seldom as high as work- 
ing-men think they ought to have, and is often, if 
not most of the time, greater than their employers 
think they can afford to pay. And then employ- 
ment in these industries is somewhat precarious. 
Every now and then there is a reduction, or a lock- 
out, simply because the protected market is not 
good enough. In fact, we have to-day before our 
eyes, at all the great centres of industry, as they 
are called — at the mills and mines and furnaces — 
most of the phenomena which " the pauper labor 
of Europe " now furnishes for the perplexity of Eu- 
ropean statesmen and philanthropists. Nor must 
I be told that this is an exceptional state of things, 
arising out of a brief and transient depression of 
industry. It has lasted from 1873, with a very 
brief interval of two years, until the present year. 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 117 

Now, this labor problem, which so many states- 
men and philanthropists and economists are try- 
ing their teeth on, is every day made more diffi- 
cult, every day further removed from solution, 
by that fatal lesson of government responsibility 
for the condition of a particular class of a com- 
munity, which every believer in high tariffs, every 
manufacturer who depends on the tariff, is com- 
pelled to preach. Of all the novelties which the 
last twenty-five years have introduced into Ameri- 
can politics and society, decidedly the most dan- 
gerous is the practice of telling large bodies of 
ignorant and excitable voters at every election that 
their daily bread depends not on their own capac- 
ity or industry or ingenuity, or on the capacity or 
industry or ingenuity of their employers, but on 
the good-will of the Legislature, or, worse still, on 
the good-will of the Administration. In other 
words, the " tariff issue," as it is called in every 
canvass, is an issue filled with the seeds of social 
trouble and perplexity. Anything less American 
and more imperialist than the regular quadrennial 
proclamation that if the presidential election re- 
suits in a certain way the foundations will be 
knocked from under American industry, the fac- 
tories closed, and the workers thrown out of em- 
ployment, could hardly be conceived. And yet, as 
long as a large number of industries exist through 



118 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the tariff, and could not exist without it, and men's 
eyes are turned, whenever there is a depression in 
business, not to the market of the world or to the 
resources of their own ingenuity, but to the lobbies 
of the Capitol, this announcement is inevitable. 
Every canvass thus becomes a lesson in depend- 
ence on the State. It becomes a sort of formal 
acknowledgment by the leading men of both 
political parties, that one class of the community, 
at least, is composed of governmental proteges ; 
for the party which denies that its coming into 
power will derange industry makes this acknowl- 
edgment, just as effectually as the party which 
brings the charge. 

The truth is, that the first field ever offered for 
seeing what the freedom of the individual could 
accomplish, in the art of growing rich and of diver- 
sifying industry, was offered on this continent. It 
was blessed with the greatest variety of soil and 
climate, with the finest ports and harbors, with the 
greatest extent of inland navigation, with the rich- 
est supply of minerals, of any country in the world. 
The population was singularly daring, hardy, ingen- 
ious, and self-reliant, and untrammelled by feudal 
tradition. That opportunity has, under the protec- 
tive system, been temporarily allowed to slip away. 
The old European path has been entered on, under 
the influence of the old European motives ; the be- 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 119 

lief that gold is the only wealth ; that, in trading 
with a foreigner, unless you sell him more in specie 
value than he sells you, you lose by the transac- 
tion ; that diversity of industry being necessary to 
sound progress, diversity of individual tastes, bent, 
and capacity cannot be depended on to produce it ; 
that manufactures being necessary to make the 
nation independent of foreigners in time of war, 
individual energy and sagacity cannot be trusted 
to create them. 

The result is that we have, during the last quar- 
ter of a century, deliberately resorted to the pol- 
icy of forcing capital into channels into which it 
did not naturally flow. We thus have supplied 
ourselves with manufactures on a large scale, but 
in doing so we have brought society in most of 
the large towns, in the East, at least, back to the 
old European model, divided largely into two 
classes, the one great capitalists, the other day- 
laborers, living from hand to mouth, and depend- 
ent for their bread and butter on the constant 
maintenance by the Government of artificial means 
of support. Agriculture has in this way been de- 
stroyed in some of the Eastern States, and, what 
is worse, so has commerce. 

Had individuals in America been left to their 
own devices in the matter of building up manu- 
factures, it is possible that the gross production of 



120 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the country in many branches would have been 
less than it is now; but it is very certain that 
American society would have been in a healthier 
condition, and American industry would have been 
" taken out of politics," or, rather would never have 
got into it. An agricultural population, such as that 
of the Northern States sixty years ago, was sure not 
to confine itself to one field of industry exclusively. 
Enterprise and activity, love of work and love 
of trying all kinds of work, were as marked feat- 
ures of the national character then as they are 
now. The American population could boast of 
much greater superiority over the European popu- 
lation than it can now. There was sure, therefore, 
to have been a constant overflow from the farms 
of the most quick-witted, sharp-sighted, and enter- 
prising men of the community, for the creation of 
new manufactures. They would have toiled, con- 
trived, invented, copied, until they had brought 
into requisition and turned to account — as, in fact, 
they did to a considerable extent in colonial days 
— one by one, all the resources of the country, all 
its advantages over other countries in climate, soil, 
water-power, in minerals, or mental or moral force. 
Whatever manufactures were thus built up, too, 
would have been built up forever. They would 
have needed no hothouse legislation to save them. 
They would have flourished as naturally and could 



SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 121 

have been counted on with as much certainty as the 
wheat crop or the corn crop. Instead of being a 
constant source of uncertainty and anxiety and 
legislative corruption, they would have been one 
of the main-stays of our social and political sys- 
tem. American manufactures would then, in 
short, have been the legitimate outgrowth of Amer- 
ican agriculture. They would have grown as it 
grew, in just and true relations to it. They would 
have absorbed steadily and comfortably its sur- 
plus population, and the American ideas of man's 
capacity, value, and needs would have reigned in 
the regulation of the new industry. 

The present state of things is one which no 
thinking man can contemplate without concern. 
If the protectionist policy is persisted in, the proc- 
ess of assimilating American society to that of 
Europe must go on. The accumulation of capital 
in the hands of comparatively few individuals and 
corporations must continue and increase. Larger 
and larger masses of the population must every 
day be reduced to the condition of day-laborers, 
on fixed wages, contracting more and more the 
habit of looking on their vote simply as a mode of 
raising or lowering their wages, and, what is worse 
than all, learning to consider themselves a class 
apart, with rights and interests opposed to, or dif- 
ferent from, those of the rest of the community. 



122 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

What, then, is to be done by way of remedy ? 
Nothing can be done suddenly ; much can be done 
slowly. We must retrace our steps by degrees, by 
taking the duties off raw materials, so as to enable 
those manufactures which are nearly able to go 
alone to get out of the habit of dependence on 
legislation, and to go forth into all the markets of 
the world without fear and with a manly heart. 
We must deprive those manufactures which are 
able to go alone already, of the protection which 
they now receive, as the reward of log-rolling in 
Congress in aid of those still weaker than them- 
selves. And we must finally, if it be possible, by 
a persistent progress in the direction of a truly 
natural state of things, prepare both laborers and 
employers for that real independence of foreigners, 
which is the result, simply and solely, of native 
superiority, either in energy or industry or invent- 
iveness, or in natural advantages. 



CEIMINAL POLITICS 

The most serious question which faces the 
modern world to-day is the question of the govern- 
ment of great cities under universal suffrage. 
There is hardly any political or social puzzle the 
solution of which has not to be worked out in the 
streets of the great towns. The labor problem, 
for instance, is almost exclusively a city problem. 
It is in cities the great labor troubles occur. It is 
in them that population is growing most rapidly. 

The following table shows the increase in the 
population in five great capitals during twenty 
years, ending in the year of the latest census : 





1861. 

2,803,989 

1861. 
1,696,741 

1867. 
702,437 

1858. 
180,359 

1860. 
805,658 




1871. 
3,254,260 

1872. 
1,851,792 

1874. 
949,144 

1870. 
216,000 

1870. 
942,292 












1871. 
825,389 






1872. 
244,484 






New York 







1881. 
3,814,571 

1881. 
2,269,023 

1885. 
1,315,297 

1881. 
300,467 

1880. 
1,206,299 



124 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

Far from being dependent for their increase in 
numbers, as the country districts are in the main, 
on the majority of births over deaths, they grow 
in size through immigration on a great scale. In 
all the leading countries there is a steady stream 
of men, women, and children into them. Men who 
have made their fortunes move into them as the 
places in which there are the most varied op- 
portunities for such pleasures as wealth brings. 
Men who have their fortunes still to make crowd 
into them as the places in which there are the best 
markets and the best opening for every variety of 
talent. 

But far more important than this is the fact that 
nearly all the poor, the improvident, the disgraced, 
the criminals, all the adventurers of both sexes, 
are consumed with the passion for city life. There 
is hardly any unsuccessful or unfortunate man in 
the United States, in England, France, Germany, 
or Italy, possessed of any mental activity or 
bodily strength, who does not think his condi- 
tion would be bettered by getting to some great 
capital. The laborers are even more eager for the 
change than the other classes. A disgust with 
country life has spread, or is spreading, among 
workingmen in all these countries. Farmers 
in England and France complain that, in spite of 
the aid of machinery, farming is becoming in- 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 125 

creasingly difficult through want of hands. The 
new generation are unwilling to cultivate the earth 
any longer, or endure the solitude of farm life, if 
they can possibly avoid it. 

The cities themselves do everything to stimulate 
this movement. Parks and gardens, cheap con- 
certs, free museums and art galleries, cheap means 
of conveyance, model lodging-houses, rich chari- 
ties, such as every city is now offering in abun- 
dance to all comers, are so many inducements to 
country poor to try their luck in the streets. They 
are the exact equivalents, as an invitation to the 
lazy and the pleasure-loving, of the Roman circus 
and free flour which we all use in explanation of 
the decline and fall of the Empire. They are 
luxuries which seem to be within every man's 
reach gratis, and they act with tremendous force 
on the rural imagination. Nor is there as yet the 
slightest sign of reaction. The great transmigra- 
tions of the world are, in the main, those of the 
farmers from one farm to another ; but there is no 
sign among the poor of a return to the country of 
those who have once tasted the sweets of city 
life. That this aversion from the land among the 
masses should be contemporaneous with the rapid 
spread of Henry George's theory, that poverty is 
due to the difficulty men have in getting hold of 
ground to cultivate, is surely a very curious social 



126 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

phenomenon. Its success, however, has been 
mainly in the towns. He has had but few dis- 
ciples among the agricultural population, and I 
suspect that even in the towns, if it were possible 
to analyze the grounds on which his followers have 
taken up his gospel, it would be found, in nine 
cases out of ten, that land, in their minds, simply 
stood for wealth in general, and that they thought 
of it as something that yielded ground-rent or 
house-rent, rather than as something that grew 
crops. 

Though last, not least, the opportunities for con- 
cealment, for escaping observation, or, in other 
words, of securing solitude, which great masses of 
population afford, make the cities very attractive to 
criminals. They are the chosen homes of every- 
body inclined to, or actually living, a life of crime 
or a life bordering on crime. Gamblers, thieves, 
receivers of stolen goods, brothel-keepers, and the 
great army of those who shirk regular industry, 
all throng to the city as the place which affords 
the best opportunities for the exercise of their 
peculiar talents. The last-named class forms in 
every city a very large body of persons who, 
though not, strictly speaking, part of the criminal 
population, live on it or through it, and readily 
descend into its ranks. 

This tendency is aggravated in this country by 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 127 

immigration, especially in the case of New York, 
which is the great receiving port for such additions 
to our population as come from Europe. In spite 
of frequent assertions to the contrary, and in spite 
of appearances to the contrary created by such ex- 
cesses as those of the Anarchists in Chicago and 
elsewhere, the bulk of the European immigrants 
to this country are orderly, industrious people who 
have contributed much to its material prosperity, 
and have made, by the sums of money they bring 
with them, no less than by their labor, by no 
means insignificant additions to its capital. They 
have undoubtedly played a very large part in the 
opening up and reclamation of the regions beyond 
the Alleghanies known as the West. Without 
them the creation of the manufacturing industries 
which we are now so frantically trying to protect 
through the tariff, would have been impossible. 
So it will not do to throw on them all the responsi- 
bility of our political disorders and shortcomings. 
But nobody can deny that they have greatly in- 
creased the difficulty of the problem of city gov- 
ernment under universal suffrage. 

Every ship-load of immigrants which lands in 
New York contains a certain proportion of what 
may, for political purposes, be called sediment — 
that is, of persons with no fixed trade or calling or 
any kind of industrial training, who started with 



128 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

but little money beyond what was necessary to pay 
their passage at sea. To some of these New York 
is as far as they want to go ; to most of them it is 
as far as they can go, and they at once recruit the 
legion of what the French call " declassts "—that is, 
of social adventurers who are compelled to live 
either by manual labor or by their wits ; and there 
is, of course, no one who has any wits who does 
not prefer the latter. That they furnish constant 
re-enforcements to the vicious and criminal ele- 
ments of the population it is hardly necessary to 
say. More than this, they furnish the puzzle of 
philosophers and the despair of statesmen. 

It is impossible to discuss this subject, as far as 
New York is concerned, without distinguishing 
between the influence on politics of the different 
nationalities which are represented in the voting 
population of the city. The two which play the 
leading part are the Germans and the Irish. At 
the last census their numbers were about equal. 
But there is a great difference in their political ac- 
tivity, partly owing to difference of temperament, 
partly to difference of training. The Germans are 
a slow, plodding, somewhat phlegmatic, and very 
serious people, who, as Dr. Von Hoist, in a re- 
view of Mr. Bryce's book, truly says, in a feverish 
intensity of American activity, with their mod- 
erate and sober ideals, quiet and steady energy, 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 129 

and modest self-confidence, act as a wholesome 
leaven. 

The Irish are quick, passionate, impetuous, im- 
pressionable, easily influenced, and with a heredi- 
tary disposition to personal loyalty to a leader of 
some sort. Their immigration is a more ignorant 
one than the German — indeed, I might say less 
civilized. They have for the most part but little, 
if any, industrial training, while the Germans have 
a great deal. There are probably ten Germans 
who come here with a trade of some sort, for one 
Irishman, and their trades are apt to be skilled 
ones which no man can successfully follow without 
having some sort of mental discipline and steadi- 
ness of character. The Germans, too, come with 
more or less affection for the government they have 
left behind, and pride in its success. The Irish 
come with hatred for their home government bred 
in their very bones. What is, perhaps, as serious 
a difference as any is that all classes of Germans, 
except the military aristocracy, are represented in 
the German immigration. It has always a mixture 
of educated men and successful business men who 
are on excellent terms with their humbler country- 
men, and united to them by all the usual social 
and political ties. It is the misfortune of the Irish 
that their educated class and successful business 
class have to a great extent been separated from 



130 POLITICAL AXD ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the bulk of the population at home by differences 
of race and religion, which continue under the new 
skies ; and the religious differences occasionally 
treat Americans to the, to them, astonishing phe- 
nomena known as " Orange riots." Consequently, 
the bulk of the poor Irish who drop down into the 
New York streets as a deposit from each succes- 
sive wave of immigration, find themselves without 
respectable natural leaders, and a ready prey to 
sharp-witted political adventurers. They are sep- 
arated from Americans, too, not only by difference 
of habits, traditions, and ideals, but by difference 
of religion — perhaps the most formidable barrier 
of all. They have to contend against that dread of 
Catholicism which has now become among all 
classes of Anglo-Saxons, whether religious or scep- 
tical, an integral part of their mental and moral 
make-up. And the Irish soon learn to regard the 
Americans, as they have learned through sorrowful 
experience to regard the well-to-do class in their 
own country, as in some sort lawful political prey, 
whom it is not improper to tax, if they get a chance, 
without mercy or compunction. 

What makes this all the more formidable is that 
they have familiarity with political machinery, 
without having any political experience ; that is, 
they know all about voting and agitating and can- 
vassing, but they have never yet elected legislators 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 131 

who were responsible for the government under 
which they lived, whom they could fairly call to 
account if their affairs were mismanaged, or of 
whose misconduct they felt the direct effects. In 
other words, they have never had the only political 
training which develops public spirit or a sense of 
public morality — the strongest argument of all, to 
my mind, for Irish home rule. Irish parliamen- 
tary elections are, in fact, as a means of political 
training, complete shams. Nor have the Irish had 
any educating experience in the conduct of their 
local affairs. The consequence is that a large body 
of the Irish voters in our large cities enter on the 
game of politics in what may be called a predatory 
state of mind, without any sense of public duty, or 
of community of interest with the rest of the tax- 
payers. "When we add to all this the fact that they 
are the only large body of immigrants who land in 
this country with a knowledge of the English lan- 
guage, and therefore can at once become acquainted 
with the ins and outs of the spoils system as prac- 
tised by the natives, and with the whole system of 
" pulls " by which justice is denied or perverted, 
the public money converted into "boodle," and 
places won by the incompetent, the part they play 
in aggravating the puzzle of city government is not 
surprising. As voters simply, the Bohemians and 
Poles are just as manageable as they are. In what 



132 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

is called " the banner Republican district " in this 
city, the Eighth, in which the late Johnny O'Brien 
held sway, there are but few Irish. The bulk of 
the voters are Slavs of one denomination or an- 
other, and follow a leader with just such fidelity as 
the Irish, but they do not know enough to get hold 
of offices. They do not secure any of the prizes of 
corruption ; and the reason is that they are igno- 
rant of the language and unfamiliar with the ma- 
chinery by which a share in the electoral plunder 
can be obtained. 

Though last, not least, the temptation to immi- 
grants who have no skilled trade and are averse to 
manual labor, and yet have a little more push and 
intelligence than the mass of their compatriots, to 
go into the liquor business in New York, owing to 
the ease with which licenses are obtained, is very 
strong, and the Irish fall victims to it in larger 
numbers than any other class of new-comers. But 
very little capital is required ; in fact, hardly any, 
as credit for liquor is readily obtained from the 
distillers and brewers by pushing fellows, and the 
furniture and fixtures of a " rum-hole " involve but 
little outlay. With a barrel of cheap whiskey, 
which can be easily increased by adulteration, 
and a few kegs of beer on hand, an energetic new- 
comer in New York not only obtains at once the 
means of livelihood, but finds himself speedily a 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 133 

prominent social and political figure in his ward, 
whom men that he thinks highly placed consider it 
worth their while to flatter, or cajole, or encourage. 
The ease with which he can enter the liquor busi- 
ness, — an ease the like of which is not to be found 
in any other civilized city, — and his joy at finding 
that in a rum-shop he has made the first step in 
what seems to him a public career, naturally affect 
profoundly the imagination of hundreds of his 
countrymen, both here and at home, who know 
something about him and watch his progress, and 
form their estimate of American politics and 
morals from his example. 

It was unfortunate that the change in the con- 
stitution of this State in 1846, establishing uni- 
versal suffrage, occurred simultaneously with the 
beginning of the great tide of emigration which 
followed the Irish famine. Its result was that the 
city was soon flooded with a large body of igno- 
rant voters, who at once furnished political specu- 
lators with a new field for their peculiar talents. 
Within six years they produced a kind of dema- 
gogue, previously unknown to the American pub- 
lic, in the person of Fernando Wood, who, by their 
aid, got into the mayoralty in 1854 — the first of 
his kind who had ever done so, for he was to all 
intents and purposes an adventurer, with no stand- 
ing in the business community. It was really he 



134 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

who organized New York city politics on what 
may be called a criminal basis ; that is, he discov- 
ered the use which might be made in politics of 
the newly arrived foreigner, and the part which 
the liquor-dealers and all keepers of criminal or 
semi-criminal drinking-places might be made to 
play in maintaining party discipline and organiza- 
tion. In controlling a body of ignorant voters, 
who did not read, no agents could be so useful 
as the keepers of " resorts " in which men congre- 
gated in the evening, and at which they got credit 
for both food and drink. 

Consequently the liquor-dealer, whether as a 
keeper of a bar, or of a " dive," or of a brothel, or 
of a cheap hotel, rapidly rose into the political 
prominence which he has ever since enjoyed. He 
became a captain of ten, or of fifty, or of a hun- 
dred, according to the size of his rum-shop and 
his own capacity for leadership. He rapidly took 
the place in politics which in the early part of the 
century was held by the foremen of the volunteer 
fire companies, as a centre of political influence 
and as the transmitter to the various wards of the 
will of the gods of the Tammany Society. Wood 
was succeeded as a boss by Tweed, and Tweed, of 
course, brought the Wood system to perfection. 
He gave the liquor - dealers increased political 
weight, and made his way to the hearts of the ten- 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 135 

ement-house population by lavish charities, such as 
the distribution of free coal in winter, which Wood 
had never thought of. His success may be esti- 
mated from the fact that he was re-elected to the 
State Senate by his constituents while the intelli- 
gent and well-to-do world above them was ringing 
with the exposure of his frauds and thefts. 

How Tweed passed away everybody knows. 
He was the victim of his own excess. He might 
have stolen with perfect impunity for a long pe- 
riod, had he been more moderate. He was ruined 
by the scale on which he did his work. But his 
system remained, and in due time produced a suc- 
cessor in the person of John Kelly, who had prof- 
ited by Tweed's example, practised the great Greek 
maxim " not too much of anything," simply made 
every candidate pay handsomely for his nomina- 
tion, pocketed the money himself, and, whether he 
rendered any account of it or not, died in posses- 
sion of a handsome fortune. His policy was the 
very safe one of making the city money go as' far 
as possible among the workers, by compelling every 
office-holder to divide his salary and perquisites 
with a number of other persons. In this way no 
one person made the gains known under Tweed, 
but a far greater number were kept in a state of 
contentment, and the danger of exposures was 
thus averted or greatly lessened. 



136 POLTICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

The more the Tammany organization had to rely 
on the liquor-dealers, the more certain and rapid 
was the transfer of its government to the hands of 
the criminal class. By criminal class I do not 
mean simply the class which commits highway 
robbery or burglary, or receives stolen goods, or 
keeps gambling-houses or houses of ill-fame. I 
mean not these only, but all who associate with 
them in political work, and who share political 
spoils with them ; who help to shield them from 
judicial pursuit either by their influence with the 
district attorney or with the police justices, or 
with the police ; in other words, both the actual 
perpetrators of crimes and those who are not re- 
pelled by them and are willing to profit in poli- 
tics by their activity. 

As I have said before, each of the numerous 
small sets, or " gangs," of which this world is 
made up has its " head-quarters " at some liquor 
store, or bar, or club, the keeper of which is its 
political guide and friend in times of trouble ; 
and he is under a constant impulse to push the 
political fortunes of his clients and demand recog- 
nition for them so as to justify their reliance on 
him and respect for him. As long as Democratic 
victories in this city have to be won by his exer- 
tions, it is, of course, difficult or impossible to 
gainsay him. Men of all other trades and callings 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 137 

occasionally retire from " politics " altogether, for 
a long or short period. But the liquor-dealer 
never retires. He remains an agitator, organizer, 
and counsellor by virtue of his calling. His 
" place " is the centre of political gossip. He 
knows more of what is going on in the ward or 
district than anybody else — who hates whom ; 
who is going to "get even" with whom; what 
Billy has been promised, or why he did not get it ; 
from whom Jake borrowed his assessment, and 
how much he owes Barney, and what "deals" 
are in progress or have been contemplated. Con- 
sequently, every organization which counts on him 
tends more and more to pass into his hands and 
those of his customers. 

This tendency has been strong in Tammany for 
many years. It has ended in excluding nearly all 
men of good character and respectable associations 
from its management. The public, which remem- 
bers that it used to have prominent lawyers and 
business men among its sachems and on its 
Executive Committee, is habitually startled at 
finding it in charge of liquor-dealers and "toughs." 
The remedy so often proposed, of taking away the 
charter which the Tammany Society obtained in 
its early and better days as a semi-charitable or- 
ganization, is puerile on its face. The only use 
of the charter of the organization, as at present 



138 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

constituted, is to enable it to own real estate. But 
it does not need to own real estate in order to ex- 
ist and flourish. It could get on just as well with, 
a hired hall as with a hall in fee-simple. Its 
strength, I repeat, lies in the control it exerts over 
the ignorant, criminal, and vicious classes through 
its liquor-dealers, who never concern themselves in 
the least about the charter, and do not need to do 
so. It can exert all its present strength without 
any legal organization whatever, like any other 
political club. Its original construction and de- 
sign and history are important in only one way. 

No organization such as it now is could be 
started in our day ; that is, the vicious and crimi- 
nal class could not in any large city get up a club 
or association which would have the coherence, 
prestige, and authority that Tammany has. The 
attempt would be a failure from the outset, even if 
the organization did not succumb to the attacks of 
the police. No civilized community would wit- 
ness with calm or indifference the deliberate forma- 
tion of a combination which was plainly hostile to 
public prosperity and order, or the efficient ad- 
ministration of justice. Steps would soon be taken 
to break it up, or discredit it in some manner, so 
as to destroy its attractiveness to its supporters. 
Membership in it would bring such disrepute that 
men seeking any foothold in the respectable busi- 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 139 

ness or professional class would be unwilling to 
belong to it ; politicians would be afraid to have 
it known that they relied on it, and it would ra- 
pidly go to pieces or be reduced to insignificance, 
even if it for a short period managed to show 
power. 

The reason why the Tammany Society manages 
to stand its ground is that it is nearly a cen- 
tury old, and for fully half that time was a real po- 
litical club, engaged in the maintenance and diffu- 
sion of certain political ideas which were, during all 
that period, making a considerable noise in the 
world, and effecting great governmental changes in 
many civilized countries. The leading men of the 
party which was the exponent of these ideas in 
this State, belonged to it, and a share in its man- 
agement was one of the rewards of some kind of 
prominence in the world outside, either political 
or professional or commercial. Of course this 
gave it, in process of time, great political weight. 
Any organization which has managed to exist and 
flourish for half a century acquires great prestige 
in a society as changeful as ours, in which organi- 
zations of all sorts rise, flourish, and fade with so 
much rapidity, and in which even the most brill- 
iant local reputations so soon pass out of men's 
memories. With the aureole thus acquired Tam- 
many came down almost to 1850. Soon after that 



140 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the vicious element began gradually to enter it and 
secure control of it, and drive politics, in the best 
sense of the term, out of it, but with so little out- 
ward sign of what was going on that the change, 
when suddenly revealed in Tweed's day, gave the 
public a shock of surprise. 

Old New-Yorkers learned then that what had 
seemed to their youthful imagination a sort of tem- 
ple of liberty, of which the worst that could be said 
was that it was too much given up to Southern 
worship of negro slavery, had really been taken 
possession of by a lot of tramps and converted into 
a " boozing ken." But they got over this shock 
somewhat after Tweed's day and the establishment 
of Tilden's supremacy in Democratic councils, and 
an air of respectability once more began to sur- 
round the ancient edifice. It did not, however, last 
for very long. The process of degeneration set in 
once more. The criminal classes renewed their ac- 
tivity, and they were in full possession before 
Tilden's death; but once more, and in spite of 
everything, the age of the edifice, the traditions 
which surrounded it, prevented the public from 
realizing what was passing within. It consequently 
almost astounded good people the other day to 
learn how few members of the Executive Com- 
mittee could be said to have any really lawful oc- 
cupation outside politics, or any genuine connec- 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 141 

tion with the respectable business or social 
world. 

Nothing is more surprising in the attempt to 
deal with the problems of urban life than the way 
in which religious and philanthropic people ignore 
the close connection between municipal politics 
and the various evils about which they are most 
concerned. All the churches occupy themselves, 
in a greater or less degree, with the moral condi- 
tion of the poor. Charitable associations spend 
hundreds of thousands every year in trying to 
improve their physical condition. A conference 
of Protestant ministers met in this city two years 
ago to consider the best means of reviving relig- 
ious interest among the working classes and induc- 
ing a larger number of them to attend church on 
Sundays. Of course these gentlemen did not seek 
an increase in the number of church-goers as an 
end in itself. The Protestant churches do not, as 
the Catholic Church does, ascribe any serious spir- 
itual efficacy to mere bodily presence at religious 
worship. Protestant ministers ask people to go to 
church in the hope that the words which they will 
hear " with their outward ears may be so grafted 
inwardly in their hearts that they may bring forth 
the fruit of good living." What was remarkable in 
the debates of this conference, therefore, was the 
absence of any mention of the very successful rival- 



142 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ry with the religion which, as an influence on the 
poor and ignorant foreign population, politics in 
this city carries on. The same thing may be said, 
mutatis mutandis, of the charitable associations. 
No one would get from their speeches or reports 
an inkling of the solemn fact that the newly arrived 
immigrant who settles in New York gets tenfold 
more of his notions of American right and wrong 
from city politics than he gets from the city mis- 
sionaries, or the schools, or the mission chapels ; 
and yet such is the case. I believe it is quite with- 
in the truth to say that, as a moral influence on 
the poor and ignorant, the clergyman and philan- 
thropist are hopelessly distanced by the politician. 
It must be remembered that the poor immigrant 
who drops down in New York generally comes 
from a country in which the idea that the public 
functionaries are the servants of the people, or the 
product of popular selection, has not as yet pene- 
trated the popular mind. He is apt to hold on 
still, in a blind, unreflective way, to the old doc- 
trine that the powers that be are of God, and that 
what a man in authority says or does is, in some 
sense, the expression of the national morality. He 
has not as yet learned to criticise public officers or 
call them to account. He obeys them ; he seeks 
to ingratiate himself with them. He accepts their 
decisions, if unfavorable, as misfortunes ; if favor- 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 143 

able, as blessings. He does not dream of appeal- 
ing against them to public opinion, for he does not 
know what public opinion is. No sooner has he 
established himself in a tenement-house or a 
boarding-house than he finds himself face to face 
with three functionaries who represent to him the 
government of his new country — the police justice 
of the district, the police captain of his precinct, 
and the political " district leader." These are, to 
him, the Federal, State, and municipal governments 
rolled into one. He does not read Story or Bryce. 
He knows nothing about the limitation of powers, 
or the division of spheres, or constitutional guar- 
antees. 

What he learns very soon is that, if he makes 
himself obnoxious to the captain of the precinct, 
he may be visited with so much vexation as to 
drive him out of the ward ; that if he would avoid 
the severities of the police justice whenever he has 
a little scrimmage with one of his neighbors, or 
gets into " trouble " of any description, he must 
have a mediator or protector, and this mediator or 
protector must be "the district leader" or a poli- 
tician belonging to one party or the other. He 
then perceives very soon that, as far as he is con- 
cerned, ours is not a government of laws, but a 
government of " pulls." When he goes into the 
only court of justice of which he has any knowl- 



144 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

edge, he is told he must have a " pull " with the 
magistrate or he will fare badly. When he opens 
a liquor-store, he is told he must have a " pull " with 
the police in order not to be " raided" or arrested 
for violation of a mysterious something which he 
hears called "law." He learns from those of his 
countrymen who have been here longer than he 
that, in order to come into possession of this 
"pull," he must secure the friendship of the 
district leader. These three men are to him 
America. Everything else in the national in- 
stitutions in which Americans pride themselves, 
he only sees through a glass darkly, if he sees it 
at all. 

If he is a man of parts and energy, or rises 
above the condition of a manual laborer into that 
of a liquor-dealer or small contractor, he finds him- 
self impeded or helped at every step by "pulls." 
If he wants a small place in the public service, he 
must have a "pull." If he wants a government 
contract, he mnst have a " pull." Whether he 
wants to get his just rights under it, or to escape 
punishment for fraud or bad work in the execu- 
tion of it, he must have a " pull." In the ward in 
which he lives he never comes across any sign of 
moral right or moral wrong, human or divine jus- 
tice. All that he learns of the ways of Providence 
in the government of the city is that the man with 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 145 

the most " pulls " gets what he wants, and that the 
man with no " pulls " goes to the wall. Every ex- 
perience of the municipality satisfies him that he 
is living in a world of favor and not of law. He 
hears that large sums of money are voted every 
year for the cleaning of the streets, but he sees 
that they are not cleaned. He hears that it is for- 
bidden to throw out dirt and ashes into the high- 
way, but he sees that all his neighbors do it with 
impunity. He hears that gambling-houses and 
houses of prostitution are forbidden, but he sees 
them doing a roaring trade all around him. He 
hears that it is a crime to keep a liquor-saloon 
open on Sunday, but he finds the one he frequents 
is as accessible on Sunday as on any other day. 
He hears that licenses to sell liquor should be 
granted only to persons of good character, but he 
sees that the greatest scoundrels in his neighbor- 
hood get them and keep them as readily as anyone 
else. He has come over the sea with the notion 
that magistrates should be grave and discreet per- 
sons, learned in the law, but he sees seated on the 
bench in his own district his own friend, Billy 
McGrath, who plays poker every night with him 
and "the boys" in Mike Grogan's saloon, and in 
court always gives his cronies " a show." No- 
where does he come on any standard of propriety 
or fitness in the transaction of public business, or 



146 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

on any recognition of such things as duty or honor 
in dealing with the public interests. 

Now, what chance have the city missionaries 
and philanthropists of making themselves felt in 
an atmosphere of this sort ? They might as well 
go to the African heathen, and try to make Chris- 
tians by dividing their preaching time with the 
medicine-men, as to try to make an impression on 
the poor of this city as long as the administration 
of its affairs is a standing denial of God. What 
helpless visionaries they must seem to thousands 
as they wander about the liquor-saloons with their 
Bibles, and tell their tales of what good Americans 
think about life and death and judgment, and 
about the prosperity which waits on the honest 
man and good citizen. The truth is that anyone 
who occupies himself with the moral and religious 
elevation of the poor in this city can no more dis- 
regard politics than a doctor, in treating physical 
disease, can refuse to take notice of bad drains or 
decaying garbage. He must not only take politics 
into account in his work, but must take it into ac- 
count at the very beginning. 

What is to be done by reformers generally to in- 
troduce a new and better regime into city affairs, 
it is not easy to describe fully within the limits of 
an article like this. There are certain things, how- 
ever, which have been fully tried and have so 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 147 

plainly failed that no more mention should be 
made of them. One is the denunciation of univer- 
sal suffrage. There is no doubt that universal suf- 
frage has added to the difficulties of city govern- 
ment, and has lowered the standard of official pu- 
rity and fitness ; but, to use the slang phrase, it 
has so plainly "come to stay," and is so firmly 
lodged in the political arrangements of most civil- 
ized nations, that it is a mere waste of time to de- 
claim against it. Complaining of it as an obstacle 
to good government is like complaining of a stormy 
sea as a reason for giving up navigation. 

Another is reliance on the State Legislature for 
new charters, or for the expulsion of bad men from 
office by special legislation. This mode of reform 
was begun in 1857, when the Eepublican party got 
possession of the State government, and it has 
ended in converting the interests of the city into 
gambling - stakes for Albany politicians to play 
with. They oust each other from city offices with 
no more reference to the interests of city tax- 
payers than butchers on killing-day to the feelings 
of the oxen. There have been eleven charters en- 
acted since 1846, and we have now got the best of 
them all, and the best we are in the least likely to 
get. It is the simplest, and puts more direct 
power into the hands of the city voters than they 
have ever had before. Its excellence lies in the 



148 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

fact that it concentrates in the mayor responsibil- 
ity for appointments to all the leading offices ex- 
cept the comptrollership, and puts the control of 
taxation in the hands of a small body of conspicu- 
ous men elected on a general ticket. We cannot 
do better than this. It makes every election a di- 
rect appeal to the good sense and public spirit of 
the voter. No community as heterogeneous as 
ours can manage its affairs successfully through 
democratic forms without reducing to its lowest 
possible point the number of executive officers 
whom it has to watch, and call to account when 
things go wrong. As soon as responsibility is 
widely diffused in such a community, " deals " or 
bargains between politicians for the division of 
the offices at once begin. 

For we have among our other difficulties to deal 
with the fact — in some of its aspects a tremendous 
one — that the fifty years of the spoils system have 
almost destroyed in the popular mind the tradi- 
tion of trusteeship in connection with public offices. 
Among active politicians they are now almost uni- 
versally looked upon, as in France under the old 
regime, as franchises or privileges authorizing the 
holder to levy a certain amount of toll on the State 
for a certain limited period. Until this view has 
been eradicated, it is reasonable to fear that a 
large municipal legislature or council, which some 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 149 

are thinking of, would simply be a reproduction 
on a smaller scale of the Albany Legislature, with 
whose weaknesses and defects the public by this 
time is tolerably familiar. It is safe to say that, 
as things are to-day, we cannot better ourselves by 
any changes in the framework of the city govern- 
ment which there is the least chance of obtaining 
from the law-making power, except in one particu- 
lar, and that is the exaction of higher qualifications 
for the office of police justice. The police magis- 
trates are, after the mayor, perhaps the most im- 
portant city officers. They have a more direct re- 
lation to municipal health and morals than any 
other. They ought to be lawyers, of at least seven 
years' standing at the bar, and men of established 
character and repute. At present there is no stand- 
ard of fitness for the office whatever. Any man 
who can get it through " pulls " is held to be com- 
petent to fill it, and it is, as a matter of fact, dis- 
posed of as a piece of party spoil to active local 
politicians. So that it may be said that, with this 
exception, we have had since 1885, when the abso- 
lute power of appointment was put into the mayor's 
hands, as good a scheme of local government as 
we have ever had, or are likely to have within any 
period worth thinking about for practical pur- 
poses. 

Have we, then, exhausted our resources? Is 



150 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the rule of the criminal classes under which we are 
living at this moment destined to be permanent ? 
Who or what is to blame for it ? Can it not be 
shaken off, or can its recurrence not be prevented ? 

The answer to these questions is comparatively 
easy. There is nothing unnatural or abnormal in 
our condition. It is the plain and natural effect 
of causes of the simplest and most obvious kind. 
In fact, it would be very odd if we were any better 
off than we are, considering the way in which we 
manage our municipal business. The objects of a 
municipal corporation are nearly as definable as 
those of a railroad company. They consist simply 
in supplying the inhabitants of a certain locality 
with certain conditions of physical health and 
comfort, plus the education of their children. The 
work is paid for by an annual subscription, and 
the executive officers are elected by a general vote. 

If there be in this world a plain moral obliga- 
tion, it is the obligation which rests on every in- 
habitant to use his vote in electing these officers 
solely in the common interest of himself and his 
neighbors. To use it in his own individual inter- 
est, or in the interest of some other corporation or 
body of persons not dwelling in the locality or 
owning property in it, is of exactly the same moral 
quality as the transaction called " wrecking a rail- 
road," in which the directors of a railroad corpo- 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 151 

ration ruin it either for their own personal gain or 
in order to contribute to the prosperity of some 
other railroad. 

In other words, it is a breach of trust. The 
more poor, or ignorant, or helpless the neighbors 
of an inhabitant of a municipal corporation are, the 
more solemn is the obligation which rests on him 
to use his superior intelligence for their benefit. 
He has no right to let them be swindled by clever 
sharpers if he can prevent it, simply because they 
are easily duped. He has no right to say that, as 
he can take care of himself in any event, he is not 
going to trouble himself about the plight of those 
who have neither knowledge enough nor money 
enough to protect themselves against fraud. He 
has no right to shut his eyes to dirty streets else- 
where because he can afford to keep his own street 
clean by private contract, and has a country house 
where he spends half the year. He has no right 
to surrender the poor to corrupt or ignorant judges, 
because he can pay for the best police the country 
affords. In short, he has no right to live an abso- 
lutely selfish life in the city any more than in the 
country at large. Patriotism has its municipal 
obligations as well as national obligations, and, in 
fact, makes duty to the municipality far clearer to 
the plain man than duty to the nation. 

If this be all true, — and I do not think it will 



152 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

meet with denial from any respectable source, — 
we shall have little difficulty in showing that the 
responsibility for our local misgovernment by no 
means rests on " the ignorant foreigners " : on the 
contrary, it rests very distinctly on the intelligent 
and well-to-do natives. They have three times 
since 1884 deliberately gone through the process 
known in railroading as " wrecking " — that is, 
have tried to use the municipal administration to 
promote schemes in which the city, as a city, has 
no special interest whatever. If the minority of 
the stockholders of a bank were to endeavor to 
put into office a certain board of directors, in or- 
der that they might make heavy loans to political 
committees, or merely in order to show their own 
strength, they would soon stand in the public eye 
in the same moral, if not legal, position as the 
men who wrecked the Sixth National Bank. And 
yet it is difficult, from the moral point of view, 
to distinguish between such conduct as this and 
the conduct of the Republicans who at every 
mayoralty election, when they know they cannot 
succeed, persist in running a third candidate in 
order to exert influence on the Presidential elec- 
tion or on congressional legislation. 

New York is, has been, and probably will re- 
main for an indefinite period, a Democratic city. 
In so far as " Democratic " means the votes of the 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 153 

more ignorant of the population, of course this is 
to be regretted. I regret it as much as anybody. 
But it is a fact, and has to be dealt with as a 
fact. And there is another fact of the situation 
still more important than this — a fact which I 
think may be called unique as a political phenome- 
non ; namely, that the ignorance and vice of the 
city have been organized in an association mainly 
for the purpose of plundering the municipal treas- 
ury and quartering a large body of shiftless peo- 
ple on the public service. But, fortunately for the 
city, this association does not contain a majority 
of the municipal voters, though it does contain a 
majority of Democratic voters. 

But the minority of Democrats who are hostile 
to it and to its works and ways, and are willing 
to act against it, is considerable — considerable 
enough to put the association in a minority at 
city elections. These dissentient Democrats can- 
not be got to accept Republican nominations, no 
matter how good they are : this, too, is very re- 
grettable. It would not be true if all Democrats 
were as intelligent and public-spirited as we 
should wish to see them. But it is a fact, and has 
to be dealt with as a fact. It has, therefore, to be 
taken into account by intelligent and honorable 
men, in providing the city with an administration, 
just as much as the liability of city houses to take 



154 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

fire. Municipal politics, like all other politics, is 
a practical art. It deals with men as they are, 
and not as we wish them to be. There is hardly 
one of us who, if he had the power of peopling 
New York anew, would not make an immense 
number of changes among its present inhabitants. 
But the problem before the wise and good is 
simply how to give the present inhabitants, such 
as they are, with all their imperfections on their 
heads, the best attainable government. The les- 
son of experience on this point is that we should 
vote for the best candidate whom either Demo- 
cratic faction puts up, and try to extract a good 
nomination from it by the promise or offer of this 
support. In nine cases out of ten this would give 
us as good a city government as we are, in the 
present condition of human nature, entitled to. 

It would have given Mayors Grace and Hewitt 
overwhelming majorities in 1884 and 1888. They 
were elected, it is true, in its absence, and they 
began a process of filling city offices which, but 
for the Republican mistake in running a candi- 
date in aid of General Harrison in 1888, would, 
in spite of some baitings, have gradually revolu- 
tionized the municipal service and established 
sound and probably permanent administrative 
traditions. As it was, this process put first-rate 
men at the head of the Board of Public Works 



CRIMINAL POLITICS 155 

and of the Health Board. It partially rescued the 
Excise Board from the liquor-dealers and con- 
siderably improved the Park Board ; and had the 
large number of vacancies which have fallen into 
the hands of Tammany during the term of Mayor 
Grant been placed at the disposal of Mayor 
Hewitt, or of a man like him, we should have en- 
tered on the year 1891 with brighter municipal 
prospects than New York has known for fifty 
years. 

But there can be no hope of permanent im- 
provement in municipal business, any more than 
in any other business, until city elections are con- 
ducted for the sake of the city. Any business 
which is administered in the interest of some other 
business soon ends in bankruptcy. A dry-goods 
business managed with a view not to the sale of 
the dry goods, but the establishment of a news- 
paper, would not last very long. New York is too 
rich to be brought to insolvency. Great cities, 
when badly administered, cannot be sold and abol- 
ished ; they simply become dirty, unhealthy, un- 
safe, disgraceful, and expensive. It is high time 
that this great municipal shame disappeared from 
among us, and deliverance ought not to be difficult, 
for we believe there is not a city in the Union in 
which the honest, well-meaning, orderly, and in- 
dustrious voters are not in a large majority. 



"THE ECONOMIC MAN" 

We have been hearing during the past twenty- 
years, and with greatly increased emphasis during 
the past ten, of the utter discredit which has over- 
taken the older political economy of Adam Smith, 
and Ricardo, and Mill, and Cairnes, and Say, and 
Cobden, and Bastiat. Their system, we have been 
told, is largely a deductive system, in which the 
premises are furnished by hypotheses which have 
no basis in the actual facts of industrial life, and 
are not verified either by experiment or observa- 
tion. Not only are these premises not true of the 
world at large, but they are not true of any par- 
ticular country in the world. They assume that 
the civilized world lives under the regime of 
competition, whereas there are only two or three 
countries which can be said, with any approach to 
accuracy, to do so. The " Economic Man " of Ri- 
cardo always buys in the cheapest markets, and 
always waits patiently until he can sell in the dear- 
est, and he assumes that in so doing he renders 
the best service in his power to the community. 



« THE ECONOMIC MAN" 157 

Moral considerations do not, in any degree, affect 
his business transactions. There is no place in his 
system for brotherly kindness or charity. It is in- 
expedient for the state to attempt to regulate him 
in any way, either by keeping him out of the 
cheapest market or impeding his access to the 
dearest. All he asks of it is to be left alone to 
deal with his fellow-men in such manner as his 
own natural acuteness or his command of capital 
may permit. His one desire is to make all the 
money he can by every means not illegal. Laissez 
/aire, laissez passer, comprises the sole and whole 
duty of the state toward him. 

Eicardo, who is the scapegoat who has to bear the 
burden of most of the sins of the old school, or who, 
at all events, figures most prominently in this dis- 
cussion, has, it is said, built up his political economy 
on the desires and fears of an entirely mythical 
personage. For his " Economic Man " is not a real 
man. This man does not represent the human race 
in general or auy particular part of it. He is a 
creature of the economist's imagination. The facts 
of human life have not entered into his composition. 
The old political economy — the " Smithianismus," 
as the Germans call it — has been based on the as- 
sumption that this economic man exists. It must 
be discarded when it is shown that he does not 
exist ; that his assumed motives and activities are 



158 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

not the law of industrial communities. A new in- 
ductive political economy must, therefore, take the 
place of this old deductive one, and must be based 
on the observation and careful accumulation of the 
facts of industrial life in civilized countries, either 
as they now exist or as they are historically re- 
corded. As the economic history of every coun- 
try differs in some degree from that of every other 
country, it follows that every country must have 
its own political economy and its own staff of ex- 
pounders of the local science. 

This is, accordingly, what has happened. There 
have arisen a German school, an Austrian school, 
an English school, a Eussian school, and an Amer- 
ican school, which all differ in the matter of 
"method," but all agree in repudiating Adam 
Smith and his economic followers, in denouncing 
laissez /aire, laissez passer, as an economic rule, in 
being intensely " historical," and in endeavoring to 
supply morality to trade through some sort of gov- 
ernment interference, not as yet clearly denned. 
The scorn of the new schools for Smith and Mill 
and Eicardo is indeed almost bitter, but their dif- 
ferences about " method " — that is, about the exact 
nature of the mental processes by which they reach 
their conclusions — are already nearly as numerous 
as those of the metaphysicians, and are apparently 
likely to prove as barren. If Comte, who first 



"THE ECONOMIC MAN" 159 

flouted the pretensions of political economy to be 
considered a science, were now living, these differ- 
ences would please him hugely as illustrations of 
the soundness of his position. A little volume on 
"The Scope and Method of Political Economy," 
recently published by Mr. Keynes, the Lecturer on 
Moral Science in Cambridge University (England), 
should be read by any one who wishes to get an 
adequate idea not so much of economical method- 
ology as of the methodological confusion which 
reigns among the economists. He remarks truly : 

"Economic science deals with phenomena which are 
more complex and less uniform than those with which the 
natural sciences are concerned; and its conclusions, ex- 
cept in their most abstract form, lack both the certainty 
and precision that pertain to physical laws. There is a 
corresponding difficulty in regard to the proper method of 
economic study, and the problem of defining the condi- 
tions and limits of the validity of economic reasoning be- 
comes one of exceptional complexity. It is, moreover, 
impossible to establish the right of any one method to 
hold the field to the exclusion of others. Different 
methods are appropriate according to the materials avail- 
able, the stage of investigation reached, and the object in 
view ; hence arises the special task of assigning to each its 
legitimate place and relative importance." (P. 6.) 

Still more pertinent is the following : 

" The sharp distinctions drawn by opposing schools, and 
their narrow dogmatism, have unnecessarily complicated 



160 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the whole problem. The subject has become involved in 
heated controversies that have not only made it wearisome 
to unprejudiced persons, but have also done injury to the 
credit of political economy itself. Outsiders are naturally 
suspicious of a science in the treatment of which a new 
departure is so often and so loudly proclaimed essential." 
(P. 8.) 

This contempt for the " Economic Man " is the 
more remarkable because the members of the his- 
toric school themselves perforce make use of him. 
Roscher, who may be called the chief of it, relies 
on him fully as much as Ricardo. Such phrases 
as these abound in him : 

" The systematic effort of every rational individual in his 
household management is directed towards the obtaining 
by a minimum of sacrifice of pleasure and energy a maximum 
satisfaction of his wants." (Vol. I, pp. 60-66.) "The in- 
centive to ameliorate one's condition is common to all men, 
no matter how varied the form, or how different the in- 
tensity of its imagination. It follows us all from the cradle 
to the grave. It may be restricted within certain limits, 
but is never entirely extinguished." All normal economy 
aims at securing a maximum of personal advantage with a 
minimum of cost or outlay." (P. 73.) " Self-interest 
causes every one to choose the course in life in which he 
shall meet with least competition and the most abundant 
patronage." (P. 75.) " The abstraction according to which 
all men are by nature the same, different only in conse- 
quence of a difference of education, position in life, etc., 
all equally well equipped, skilful, and free in the matter of 



" THE ECONOMIC MAN" 161 

economic production and consumption, is one which, as 
Kicardo and Von Tinmen have shown, must pass as an indis- 
pensable stage in the preparatory labors of political econo- 
mists." (P. 105.) "The mathematical laws of motion 
operate in a hypothetical vacuum, and when applied are sub- 
ject to important modifications in consequence of atmos- 
pheric resistances. Something similar is true of most of 
the laws of our science ; as, for instance, those in accord- 
ance with which the price of a commodity is fixed by the 
buyer and seller. It also always supposes the parties to the 
contract to be guided only by a sense of their own best in- 
terest, and not to be influenced by secondary considera- 
tions." (P. 103.)* 

The comparison of Ricardo's Economic Man to 
the first law of motion is an old one, but it is as 
good to-day as when it was first made. It is quite 
true, as far as human knowledge goes, that no body 
actually continues for an indefinite period in rec- 
tilinear and uniform motion. But it is also true 
that no real progress would ever have been made 
in astronomy or mechanics without the assumption 
that if a body were set in motion in a vacuum this 
is the way in which it would move. It is no less 
true that political economy, no matter how defined, 
cannot be taught without assuming the existence 
of an Economic Man who desires above all things, 
and without reference to ethical considerations, to 
get as much of the world's goods as he can with 

* These quotations are all made from Lalor's translation. 
11 



162 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the least possible expenditure of effort or energy 
on his own part. The fact that he is not humane 
or God-fearing no more affects his usefulness for 
scientific purposes than the fact that the first law 
of motion would carry a cannon-ball through a 
poor man's cottage. The theory of production, 
of value, and of exchange, rests on his assumed 
existence. He supplies the reason d'etre of the 
whole criminal law and of a large part of the civil 
law of all civilized countries. Ethics, and religion 
in so far as it furnishes a sanction for ethics, exist 
for the purpose of deflecting him from his normal 
course. The well-known " Gresham's Law," which 
declares that the less valuable of two kinds of 
legal-tender money will drive the more valuable 
out of circulation, has been understood by some 
of our more ignorant bimetallists as meaning that 
one will exert some kind of mechanical pressure 
or chemical repulsion on the other. But " Gres- 
ham's Law " is simply a deduction from observa- 
tion of the working of the Economic Man's 
mind when brought into contact with two kinds of 
currency of unequal value, and through our knowl- 
edge of the Economic Man we can predict its 
operation with almost as much certainty as the 
operation of a law of chemistry or physics. 

Ethics and religion, in fact, constitute the dis- 
turbing forces which make possible the organiza- 



" THE ECONOMIC MAN" 163 

tion and prosperous existence of civilized states. 
They have to be calculated and allowed for and 
their working observed, just as the disturbing force 
of gravity, or atmospheric or other resistance, has 
to be calculated, allowed for, and its working ob- 
served, in astronomy or mechanics. But this cal- 
culation would be impossible if the constant 
tendency were not known. If the Economic Man 
were blotted out of existence, nearly all the dis- 
cussions of the economists would be as empty 
logomachy as the attempts to reconcile fixed fate 
and free will. That I am not here fighting a shadow 
is shown by the fact that General Francis A. 
"Walker, himself an economist of eminence, in a re- 
cent address before the American Economic Asso- 
ciation, on " The Tide of Economic Thought," gives 
the following as one of the reasons for the currency 
at this juncture of " the vaguest and wildest 
schemes for human regeneration upon an economic 
basis " : 

" First. The economists themselves are largely respon- 
sible for this state of things, on account of the arbitrary 
and unreal character of their assumptions and the haughty 
and contemptuous spirit in which they have too often 
chosen to deliver their precepts. Especially are our Amer- 
ican economists sinners above the rest in these respects. 
Long after even the English economists, who have been 
lordly enough, Heaven knows! had importantly modified the 
traditional premises of the science to meet the facts of human 



164 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

nature, and had, with a wider outlook, admitted many ex- 
tensive qualifications of the doctrine of laissez faire, the 
professors of political economy in the leading American 
colleges continued to write about the economic man of 
Eicardo and James Mill as if he was worth all the real men 
who ever lived ; and the editors of the journals and re- 
views which especially affected to exercise authority in 
economics, greeted with contumely every suggestion of an 
exception to the rule of individualism, from whatever 
source proceeding, for whatever reason proposed. Even 
the complete establishment of such an exception in the 
policy of half a dozen nations, and its triumphant vindica- 
tion in practical working to the satisfaction of all publi- 
cists, all men of affairs, and even of those who had once 
been selfishly interested to oppose it, constituted no rea- 
son why these high priests of economic orthodoxy should 
accept it." 

I might, if I had space, take serious exception 
to these allegations about the teachings of profess- 
ors in American colleges, on the score of exagger- 
ation, and also to the proposition touching the 
satisfaction of " all publicists and all men of 
affairs," on the score of accuracy. But I am not 
concerned about this so much as about the state- 
ment that the English and other economists have 
" importantly modified the traditional premises 
of the science." I am sure that were General 
Walker debating any topic but political economy, 
in discussing which no man ever gets fully outside 
of his subject, he would at once recognize the fact 



11 THE ECONOMIC MAN" 165 

that the premises of "a science" cannot be altered 
to suit any one's fancy or convenience. Science 
means the law which regulates the succession of 
phenomena. Scientific investigation means an 
attempt by observation or experiment, or both, to 
get at this law. But it is only in theology or 
metaphysics that the scientific investigator creates 
his own premises, and makes hypotheses which 
account for nothing. In all other fields, political 
economy included — if it be a science — the prem- 
ises are not furnished by the logician, but by the 
phenomena of nature. Human society furnishes 
the economist with his phenomena, and therefore 
with his premises. He can, if he be a scientific 
man, no more modify them " importantly " or 
otherwise than he can by taking thought add a 
cubit to his stature. He can, of course, as in any 
line of investigation, frame hypotheses, but the 
hypotheses have to be verifiable by observation or 
experiment. But under all circumstances, and for 
all purposes, there is no getting away from the 
phenomena. You may dislike them, or wish they 
were otherwise, but accept them you must. You 
may approach them inductively by collecting 
them for your premises, or you may approach them 
deductively by concocting a hypothesis or theory 
to explain them, but you must still apply them 
promptly to your conclusion to see whether they 



166 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

fit. I venture to assert that there is not a single 
economist of the old school, beginning with Adam 
Smith, who, as a scientific man, has not used both 
these methods with such success as his diligence 
and skill permitted. But in all economic investi- 
gation the first inquiry is, and, so far as it is eco- 
nomical, must forever remain : what will the Eco- 
nomic Man do when brought in contact with certain 
selected phenomena of the physical or social 
world ? And the more complicated the facts of the 
industrial and social world are, the more necessary 
to the economist the Economic Man is, in order to 
enable him to steer his way through the maze. 

The existing confusion in the economic world, 
which General "Walker's charge, quoted above, well 
illustrates, is due, apparently, to difficulty in getting 
the members of the new or historical schools to 
tell us in what character they appear. One can 
never tell, in listening to them, whether they are 
addressing us as scientific men or statesmen. 
Their air of authority is that of scientists, but the 
eager philanthropy of their utterances indicates 
that they are really would-be legislators. Their 
clothes are economical, but their talk is ethical. 
To take Roscher again as an example of the best- 
known and most moderate of them, one finds that 
what he has added to the work of the older econo- 
mists, besides the illustrations supplied by an 



" THE ECONOMIC MAN" 167 

enormous erudition, consists mainly of theology 
and metaphysics. The new schools profess to know 
far more about the will of God, and about duty 
and the moral sources of happiness, and the ethi- 
cal foundations of the state, than the older econo- 
mists ; but they have not contributed anything of 
practical importance to our knowledge of the laws 
of value, of production, or of exchange, as extracted 
from the mind of the producer and purchaser. The 
test of science is that it enables one to predict con- 
sequences. Until our researches have enabled us 
to foresee exactly what will happen if something 
else happens, although we may have discovered val- 
uable and interesting facts, we have not discovered 
a law. That the historical school has laid before 
us a large mass of interesting information about 
the industrial condition of various countries at 
various periods cannot be denied, but I am unable 
to see in what its contributions to economical 
literature differ from the books of intelligent and 
observant travellers. Its great objection to the 
policy of laissez /aire — that it permits a consider- 
able amount of cruelty, oppression, and suffering, 
and that, in spite of its teachings, poverty exists 
on a great scale among the laboring classes — is an 
ethical or political, not a scientific, objection. It 
is simply saying to the rich what the " Society for 
the Abolition of Poverty " says — that they are cruel 



168 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

or unjust. It does not suggest any economical 
mode, in the scientific sense of the term, for im- 
proving the condition of the poor. 

Take as an example of my meaning General 
Walker's announcement, in the passage I have 
just quoted, of " the complete establishment " of 
" an exception to the rule of individualism " (I 
presume the regulation of factory labor) "in the 
policy of half a dozen nations " " to the satisfac- 
tion of all publicists, all men of affairs," etc. 
This exception, let us observe, was first made in 
the country which has been supposed to be most 
influenced by the individualists. But no matter 
what its merits, or what its results, the fact re- 
mains that it is not an exception in the economic 
sense. It is a political or social measure, not an 
economic one. It is not a conclusion of economic 
science. It is a dictate of humanity or physiology 
or religion. It is a police regulation, to which the 
Economic Man is no more opposed than to the re- 
strictions on the use of public water or the munic- 
ipal prohibition of the storing of gunpowder. It 
was opposed in the beginning not by economists, 
but by manufacturers who happened to be at the 
time strongly combating the kind of government 
interference with production which had been the 
rule in Europe ever since the Middle Ages. There 
is no foundation for the suggestion that in any "half 



" THE ECONOMIC MAN" 169 

dozen " countries in the world the Economic Man 
has offered any serious impediment to the kind of 
special interference with distribution for the bene- 
fit of the race which is known as socialistic legis- 
lation. The legislation has, as a matter of fact, 
begun earliest in England, where individualism 
has been supposed to be most powerful, and has 
gone on, pari passu, with the spread of the opinions 
associated with the names of Smith and Bicardo 
and Cobden. The only effect of these opinions 
on English legislation has been to abolish the 
former hindrances to exchange with foreign coun- 
tries ; and those who advocated this have certainly 
not been brought to shame by the resulting effect 
on the national industry and on the condition of 
the working classes. 

In short, the new school of economists are 
rather politicians, using the word in its good 
sense, than scientific men. What mainly occupies 
them is legislation for taking away money from 
capitalists and distributing it among laborers. 
The earlier school may have paid too much atten- 
tion to the problem of production. The later 
ones can hardly be said to pay any attention at 
all to production. With the effect of their plans 
on production— that is, on the dividend which the 
earth yields every year to the labor of its inhab- 
itants — they hardly seem to concern themselves. 



170 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

To talk of their championship of the working 
classes as being in any sense scientific would be 
an abuse of language. 

I cannot help thinking that General Walker's 
ascription of the existing currency "of the 
vaguest and wildest schemes for human regenera- 
tion on an economic basis" to the economists 
— meaning by that the followers of Ricardo and 
Mill — is a curious misapprehension. It reads 
very like the criticism of the wolf on the lamb's 
pollution of the water. If dates throw any light 
on the matter, " the wild and vague schemes 
for human regeneration upon an economic basis " 
did not begin to spread or take hold of any civil- 
ized community with marked force or effect until 
after the convention of the "Katheder Socialis- 
ten " in Germany in 1877, and the appearance of 
the historical school in Germany, England, and 
America. Professor Ingram's attack on political 
economy in general in the " Encyclopaedia Britan- 
nica" undoubtedly gave somewhat of a blow to 
" Smithianismus," but he only repeated what 
Comte had already said of the absurdity of sup- 
posing that there could be any such thing as 
economical science apart from the general science 
of sociology. He, however, greatly diminished 
the apparent value of the Economic Man and 
helped to start crowds of young professors and 



" THE ECONOMIC MAN" 171 

labor agitators and politicians in search of a new 
economy which would shorten hours of labor, 
raise wages, humble the employer, give the la- 
borer a fair share in the luxuries of life, and 
eventually abolish poverty. 

The progress of this quasi scientific movement 
toward social regeneration through government 
interference, of the discredit of the older econo- 
mists, and of the resulting economic confusion of 
which General Walker speaks, has been hastened 
by two other agencies of which he takes no notice. 
The charge that this confusion has been brought 
about through the bad manners of the old econo- 
mists, and the hard-and-fast way in which they 
presented their theories to the multitude, shows 
that it is not science but politics which has been 
expected of them. The fact — if it be a fact — that 
the multitude refuses to listen to them any longer, 
and has gone off to worship new gods, does not 
prove that they have reasoned wrongly on the 
facts of society. It simply proves that their con- 
clusions are unpopular. That a certain number 
of persons have gone into "the vaguest and 
wildest schemes for human regeneration on an 
economic basis " does not show that the assump- 
tions of the old economists have been " arbitrary 
and unreal," although it may show that their pre- 
cepts have been delivered in a " haughty and con- 



172 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

teniptuous spirit." But judging these economists 
as legislators, which is really what the new school 
does, it is impossible to decide, on any data now 
in our possession, whether the laissez-faire sys- 
tem, as it is called, has been, or will be, success- 
ful or not. 

There is, unhappily, no absolute test of suc- 
cess in economic legislation. All that the wisest 
legislator can look for as a sign of his success 
in dealing with economic problems is a reduc- 
tion in the amount of discontent among the 
poor. To abolish discontent among the poor com- 
pletely, in any country, is as hopeless a task as 
to abolish poverty, and no statesman attempts 
it. Whether he has succeeded in lessening dis- 
content he can only ascertain approximately, by 
means of an inference from the increase of con- 
sumption as shown in statistics collected from 
various sources. He concludes, a priori, that the 
poor are less discontented when they consume 
more of the necessaries and luxuries, because he 
has observed that, as a rule, physical comfort 
among the great bulk of mankind tends to pro- 
duce happiness ; but no economist can say with 
certainty that any particular kind of economical 
legislation is the best possible, or has produced 
effects which no other kind would or will produce. 
It is here that the complexity of all sociological 



" THE ECONOMIC MAN" 173 

problems comes in to baffle the politician, and 
compels him, in the vast majority of cases, to 
legislate simply for the Economic Man, with 
whose needs and tendencies he is, as a rnle, far 
more familiar than he is with the needs of the 
ethical man. So that if the new schools of politi- 
cal economy enter the field, as they are apparently 
doing, not as scientists, but as legislators, their 
attacks on the old one as politicians cannot have 
any better basis than pride of opinion. It re- 
mains to be seen whether their plans for the pro- 
motion of human happiness are in any way supe- 
rior to those of the old school or not. 

It seems to be forgotten that the paternal sys- 
tem of government, in which what is called " the 
state " plays the part of an earthly parent to the 
individual, has been tried on an extensive scale in 
various communities and at various periods of the 
world's history, and with very poor success. I 
grant that it has not been tried under conditions 
as favorable as those which now exist. The ex- 
periment may now be made with greatly improved 
administrative machinery, with minute as well as 
wide knowledge of economic facts and tendencies, 
and under the watch of a powerful public opinion. 
But, on the other hand, the state has lost com- 
pletely, in the eyes of the multitude, the moral and 
intellectual authority it once possessed. It does 



174 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

not any longer represent God on earth. In demo- 
cratic countries it represents the party which 
secured most votes at the last election, and is, in 
many cases, administered by men whom no one 
would make guardians of his children or trustees 
of his property. When I read the accounts given 
by the young lions of the historical school of the 
glorious future Avhich awaits us as soon as we get 
the proper amount of state interference with our 
private concerns for the benefit of the masses, and 
remember that in New York " the state " consists 
of the Albany Legislature under the guidance of 
Governor Hill, and in New York city of the little 
Tammany junta known as " the Big Four," I con- 
fess I am lost in amazement. I ask myself, How 
can anybody who attacks the old school with such 
vigor for its indifference to the facts of daily life, 
be so completely oblivious of that most patent 
fact, that the capacity of the state for interfering 
with people profitably, has not grown in anything 
like the same ratio as the popular intelligence, and 
that there is nothing in which modern democracy 
is showing itself so deficient as in the provision of 
inspecting machinery — that is, in securing the 
faithful execution of its plans for the promotion 
of popular comfort ? 

The agencies which have really done most to 
discredit the older political economy with the 



" THE ECONOMIC MAN » 175 

masses, and to produce an efflorescence of wild 
schemes of social regeneration on an economic 
basis, are, as I have said, two in number. The 
first is the extravagant expectations about the 
powers of the state in the solution of economical 
problems raised by the historical school since its 
appearance in 1877. Its promises and denuncia- 
tions have been flung into democratic communities 
in which, as in France, Germany, and England, the 
poorer classes were just becoming aware of the 
extent of the power over the government which 
universal suffrage had put into their hands. In no 
country have " the masses," in the modern sense of 
that term, ever been greatly concerned about polit- 
ical liberty, as the men of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries in this country and England 
understood it and fought for it ; that is, about the 
division of the sovereignty between different bodies 
so as to prevent the growth of arbitrary power. 
The greatest political interest of that vast majority 
of th<^ human race which is in but a small degree 
removed from want, always Las Loen. and probably 
always will be, the power of legislation over dis- 
tribution. A good government always has been to 
them a government under which trade is brisk, 
wages are high, and food is cheap. The reason 
why the older political economy has seemed to 
them "a dismal science " has been that its teach- 



176 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ings, in so far as it attempted to teach, discouraged 
reliance on the state for these things, and made the 
attainment of them dependent on individual char- 
acter. I am not now discussing whether this doc- 
trine was or was not pushed too far ; I simply say 
that it was the most natural thing in the world for 
the working classes of England, for example, which 
had been so long familiar with legislation for the 
direct benefit of the middle and upper classes, to 
receive with anger or suspicion the announcement 
that the care of any class by the state was a mis- 
take, and that individual independence was the 
true rule of industrial life. When these classes, 
therefore, found themselves invested through the 
suffrage with political power, it was inevitable that 
they should seek at once to improve their condi- 
tion through legislation, and should receive with 
acclamation the news that a new school of political 
economy had been founded which taught as " sci- 
ence " that the politicians were the true fathers of 
their country, and would, on application, put an 
end to unjust distribution. In shore, ihe new de- 
partnre v.hicn the new schools are all calling for is 
a new departure in politics, not in political econ- 
omy. There is hardly a trace of science in their 
talk any more than in that of city missionaries. 
What they are asking us to do is simply to try a 
hazardous experiment in popular government. 



11 THE ECONOMIC MAN' 1 177 

The second agency in producing the existing 
economic confusion, which, as it appears to me, 
General Walker overlooks, is the substitution in 
nearly all the churches of the "gospel of social 
endeavor," as it has been called, for the old theo- 
logical gospel. There are very few clergymen to- 
day who venture to expound in their pulpits what 
was formerly called the " Queen of the Sciences," 
the science of Christian theology. This used to be 
their chief business. Of this science they were 
the acknowledged masters. They were supposed 
to have the key to the greatest of all earthly prob- 
lems, and their contentions with each other over 
the proper solution of it, furnished the chief in- 
terest of the intellectual world in all countries. 
When Dr. Lyman Beecher took the charge gi a 
group of " anxious inquirers " out of the hands of 
Judge Gould at Litchfield, he did so as a profes- 
sional man, just as a physician would have taken a 
case of typhoid fever out of the hands of an apothe- 
cary, and the church saw clearly the overwhelming 
necessity of the judge's deposition. Probably nine 
out of ten of the members to-day would smile over 
the good doctor's notion that his skill in dealing 
with spiritual suffering was, ex officio, any greater 
than the judge's. In fact, authority has departed 
from the pulpit as a profession. Everybody nowa- 
days acknowledges this, and clergymen feel it. 
12 



178 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

They feel especially that they have failed in obtain- 
ing influence for revealed religion over the great 
masses of population congregated in modern cities, 
and yet it is these masses which have laised what 
is called the " labor problem," and have produced 
the prodigious economic tumult which the histori- 
cal school is trying to allay. 

That ministers who feel that the old gospel has 
lost its power to soothe discontent and to account 
for social evils, should endeavor to get at the point 
of view of the laboring poor, and should in a large 
number of cases, through force of sympathy, come 
to share in their illusions touching the power of 
government over distribution, is surely very na- 
tural. The socialist view of what social arrange- 
ments ought to be, is very much like that of the 
early Christians, and the clergyman's imagination 
is naturally touched by finding it held by large 
bodies of his contemporaries. Moreover, was not 
the world once conquered by an ethical idea, and 
what is easier than for an ardent preacher to be- 
lieve that it is not too late to do it over again ? It 
has been maintained in this city in a clerical con- 
vention within twenty years, in all seriousness, that 
the whole world might be, and probably would be, 
with proper effort, " converted," in the technical 
sense of that term, within thirty years. What is 
there very wonderful in the opinion that this con- 



•'THE ECONOMIC MAN" 170 

version might be hastened by a rearrangement, 
under government superintendence, of the relations 
of labor and capital. 

Moreover, the notion that the economists are to 
blame for the aberrations of " the benevolent cler- 
gymen, ecstatic ladies," and other " prophets and 
disciples of an industrial millennium," would be 
more plausible if an industrial millennium were any- 
thing new, or if, from the days of Hesiod to our 
own, the evils of man's condition had not been laid 
on the greed of the rich, on the pride of the wise 
and learned, and on the inhumanity of the great, by 
a long catena of poets, sages, and prophets. That 
the volume of social discontent is now greater than 
in former ages is due mainly to the multitude of 
new problems we have to face, to the immensely 
improved means of spreading ideas, to the won- 
derful economic changes effected by science and 
invention, and, though last not least, to the appear- 
ance on the scene of the new schools of political 
economy to preach the limitlessness of the province 
of government. But the labor problem remains 
very much what it has been ever since agriculture 
was substituted for hunting and fishing — a prob- 
lem which, in the main, each man must solve for 
himself. 



IDLENESS AND IMMOEALITY 

One of the most curious and interesting politi- 
cal and economical changes of the last hundred 
years, although it has attracted comparatively little 
notice, is the transfer of the legislative and ad- 
ministrative branches of government from the rich 
to the poor. We hear a great deal about the re- 
cent transfer of power to the people in certain 
countries, such as France, England, the United 
States, Germany, Italy, meaning thereby the power 
of determining at the polls who shall compose the 
government and what its policy on certain ques- 
tions shall be. But we hear little about the change 
in the character of the governing class, which is also 
a very marked feature of the democratic move- 
ment. 

Now, the governing class all over Europe was, 
from the fall of the Koman Empire to the Eevo- 
lution in France and down to the passage of the 
Reform Bill in England, and, we may say, down to 
Andrew Jackson's time in America, the wealthy 
class; and the wealthy class until the present 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 181 

century were the owners of the soil. Modern Eu- 
rope was in fact settled, if I may use the expres- 
sion, on the theory that the landowners were " the 
country," the " legal country " as the French called 
it, and that everybody else was in a certain sense 
a sojourner or interloper. Before the Beform Bill 
in England, all extension of the suffrage beyond 
the freeholders, and all admission to Parliament of 
men who had no property in land, was denounced 
as committing the public affairs to people who 
had "no stake in the country." The property 
qualification for the suffrage which existed in most 
States of the Union at the Revolution, and con- 
fined it to " freeholders," was based on the same 
assumption, that is, that the nation was made up 
of those who owned the land in fee simple, and 
that all others might betray it, or run away from 
it, or had but a faint interest in its fame or pros- 
perity. 

That this notion had good traditional authority 
there is no denying, for it was the great landed 
proprietors who evoked some sort of order out of 
the chaos which followed the invasion of the Bar- 
barians. The man who by force of character and 
military talent was able to gather a sufficient bod} r 
of armed followers to protect a certain bit of terri- 
tory against pillage by marauders, to build a forti- 
fied house on it in which his dependents might 



182 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

find temporary shelter for their families and cattle, 
and guarantee to the cultivators of the soil a fair 
amount of security while working in the fields, be- 
came outwardly the governor of his proteges. Far 
from wishing to share his authority, the great 
dread of their lives was that he would lay it down 
or fail to exercise it with sufficient vigor. For 
similar reasons they were only too glad to have his 
oldest son assume the same rights and duties on his 
father's death, and in two or three generations a 
hereditary landed aristocracy was established, and 
the reorganized society found it in full possession 
of all the government there was, and kept it there 
for a thousand years. 

The men who owned the land, too, were during 
all this period the only wealthy class except the 
Jews. Land was the only investment which fur- 
nished anything that could be called an income. 
Everybody was more or less afraid to let his prop- 
erty out of his sight, or own property which 
could be carried away. The name given to 
land in the nomenclature of the English com- 
mon law — " real property " or " real estate " — ex- 
pressed not only the popular notion about it, 
but described the greatest political and econom- 
ical fact of the day. The "man of property" 
was the landed man. He and his followers owned 
the country, and it seemed for ages perfectly 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 183 

natural and right that they should govern the 
country. 

Now, the peculiarity of landed property which 
draws its income from rents is that it needs the 
personal attention of the owner. It used to make 
him a great man among his tenants, over whose 
future he exercised much power ; and this power 
was increased in many countries by attaching to 
it the administration of local justice and the 
management of the financial affairs of the district 
or county. The country gentleman for fully 
twelve hundred years exercised jurisdiction over 
local affairs and small controversies, besides levy- 
ing and spending the local taxes. He was, as a 
rule, consequently an extremely busy man, and 
became in popular estimation the only real states- 
man. Even in Burke's day a man of his great 
political genius was held by the Whigs to be 
unworthy of a seat in the Cabinet, because he was 
not connected with the landed gentry. So late as 
the Peninsular war, that most practical of com- 
manders, Wellington, sent home earnest appeals 
for officers of " good family," meaning the sons of 
country gentlemen, as having some special and 
mysterious superiority in the work of fighting, 
although he was opposed to an enemy who had 
overrun Europe with an army led by the sons of 
butchers, bakers, and tavern-keepers. The necessity 



184 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

for keeping the property together in the hands of 
the eldest son to enable him to maintain the position 
of the family in society or politics, compelled the 
youngest sons to shift for themselves, and in every 
modern European country they were enabled to 
shift for themselves by having the public service 
reserved for them. They officered the army and 
navy and the diplomatic service, and got all the 
best places in the civil administration. In fact, 
John Bright did not exaggerate greatly when, 
speaking of the period before the introduction of 
the method of filling subordinate places by com- 
petitive examination, he called the public service 
a " huge system of out-door relief for the younger 
members of the aristocracy." The French Ke vo- 
lution made the first break in this system in 
France ; but it has lasted in England almost down 
to our own day, and is still in existence, in a modi- 
fied degree, in Germany and Austria. 

It will be easily seen that this is a description 
of a state of things in which, as a rule, the owners 
of the wealth of the country were both its legisla- 
tors and administrators, and that both the fathers 
and the sons were kept busy. They all had their 
duties and responsibilities, either as managers of 
their own estates, or as local magistrates, or as 
legislators, or as officers of the army and navy, or 
of the civil service, or as ministers of the estab- 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 185 

lished Church — an organization which in all coun- 
tries in which it existed, possessed an enormous 
mass of property. The economical or political 
revolutions which have occurred within the present 
century have greatly changed all this. Power has 
passed from the owners of the land to people 
of every kind of occupation. The work of legis- 
lation has been largely given over to poor men, 
or the sons of poor men, who in all parliamentary 
countries except England, draw pay for it. The 
administrative offices have been thrown open to 
the same class. The great landowner has been 
converted almost everywhere into an annuitant, 
drawing a certain income from his estates, but ex- 
erting comparatively little influence on the lives or 
fortunes of the tenants. In a word, the aristocracy of 
all countries except Germany has become our idle 
class. It is literally true of the aristocrats now, 
that they toil not, neither do they spin. They no 
longer render the state the service which the old 
feudal tenures exacted of them, and their enjoy- 
ment of large incomes drawn from the industry 
expended on the soil by others, becomes increas- 
ingly difficult to defend in the forum of abstract 
justice. The great landholders of the world have, 
in fact, more and more to protect themselves by 
showing the danger to all property that would 
probably result from an attack on their particular 



186 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

kind of property. One consequence of this is 
that the accumulated wealth of the world no 
longer passes into the land. The passion for 
" broad acres " has died or is rapidly dying out. 
The number of people who are " land poor " in- 
creases. The extraordinary improvement in the 
means of communication has, for practical pur- 
poses, thrown all the agricultural land of the 
world into one market, and thereby all the farmers, 
from China to Peru, compete with each other. 

As either a consequence or an accompaniment 
of this, the accumulated capital of each year is 
now gathered up by corporations who turn it over 
in all sorts of industrial enterprises, through the 
instrumentality of hired employees, and pay the 
owners a moderate but tolerably sure percentage 
on it. If it is not disposed of in this way, it goes 
into government loans, on which interest is paid 
out of the taxes. Now, the amount of these in- 
vestments from which men may draw a certain in- 
come, without any exertion of mind or body on 
their own part, is something enormous. The cap- 
ital invested in the railroads of the world is esti- 
mated at $30,000,000,000. The total national 
debts of the world are estimated at $32,000,000,000. 
A good deal of this, of course, does not yield in- 
terest, but if, on the average, it pays one per cent., 
the income drawn from it is immense, and we leave 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 187 

out of sight the very large number of various in- 
dustrial enterprises owned by corporations whose 
shares may be held by anybody, however unused 
to and unfit for active business. 

The interest on this great sum, of course, goes 
in a considerable degree into the pockets of men 
and women who are actively engaged in some sort 
of industry, and represents their savings. A con- 
siderable part of it is devoted to the support of 
helpless people, widows and orphans, and the aged 
and infirm. Much of it passes into the treasury 
of charitable and educational institutions and 
churches. But it affords also to a large and in- 
creasing body of persons of both sexes the means 
of living lives of absolute leisure, of abstaining, that 
is to say, from all distasteful labor, from doing the 
things they do not like to do ; and what is perhaps 
fully as important in its moral aspect is, that it 
breaks their connection with any particular locality. 
In the old days before the creation of this great mass 
of stocks and bonds, nearly every man was bound 
by ties of some sort to a particular place, in which 
his presence during the greater part of the year 
was made necessary by some sort of duty, or from 
which departure was difficult or inconvenient. Of 
course this is still true of the great bulk of man- 
kind. The majority of the human race are still in a 
certain sense adscripti glebce, bound by uncontrol- 



188 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

lable circumstances to pass their lives in some par- 
ticular spot of earth. But the proportion which 
can, if they please, lead nomad lives, that is, can 
pass from place to place at will and settle them- 
selves for longer or shorter periods in any one that 
takes their fancy, gains very rapidly and is now 
very large in every country. England and America 
supply by far the greater number of these " Jieim- 
athlosen" as the Germans call people who have no 
fixed domicile, owing doubtless in part to Anglo- 
Saxon restlessness, but certainly in a very large de- 
gree to the large revenue yielded in these countries 
by various kinds of what we call "interest-bearing 
securities," or, in other words, to the large number 
of persons in both countries who have investments 
which do not call for their personal attention and are 
made fruitful by other people's management and 
labor. No doubt a good deal of this migration has 
serious objects in view — such as health or education. 
But the proportion of it that is simply aimless 
wandering in search of new forms of excitement or 
amusement, is very large and is growing. One of 
the most marked effects of this migratory habit is a 
certain volatility which makes it difficult to keep 
the attention fixed very long on one object or on 
one species of occupation or amusement, and ends 
by reducing its victims to a somewhat childish 
mental condition. Every one who has had any ac- 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 189 

quaintance with the world of fashion and leisure 
which is to be found at any of the European win- 
ter and summer resorts, must have observed how 
easily people tire of their amusements and com- 
panions, how necessary frequent change of place 
or pursuit is to their comfort, and how often 
they remind one of the perennial childish cry, 
" Mamma, what shall I do next ? " 

Mr. Gladstone, in discussing Lord Tennyson's 
"Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," enumerates 
the changes which have come over England within 
that period, and mentions as one of the most 
marked the great increase of this idle class, and 
he throws on them the burden of justifying their 
existence. But the increase continues in an accel- 
erated ratio. The last thing in the world they 
think of is justifying either their existence or the 
manner of their existence. No class are less given 
to any species of speculative inquiry or less 
troubled about the moral aspect of their pursuits. 
In so far as the members have become serious, it 
is in desiring new forms of amusement or new 
places to play in. In fact, they have made amuse- 
ment a business, and engage in it with an attention 
to details, a regard to finish and efficiency, which 
in many cases would be sufficient to insure success 
in any species of trade or industry. Where they 
are weak is in want of persistence, for to nothing 



190 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

is a life of amusement more fatal, as I have said, 
than the power of continuance in any one pursuit. 
The will becomes gradually weakened under long 
release from strenuous exertion, and the thing " got 
up," however successful it may be, soon becomes 
tiresome. 

There is one distraction, however, of which the 
idle class can hardly be said ever to tire, and 
which idle people can hardly be considered capa- 
ble of avoiding, and that is the distraction of love- 
making under more or less illicit conditions. This 
is what they fall back on when all else fails or 
becomes vapid. When men and women are 
thrown together in the midst of luxury without 
duties or responsibility, and without exposure to 
any criticism except what comes from persons 
similarly situated, the possibilities of scandal grow 
very rapidly, and the air is soon filled with it. 
The sexual passion is of all passions the most 
wayward, watchful, and readiest for temptations. 
Neither law nor religion, nor tradition nor cus- 
tom, has yet been able to furnish a force capable 
of keeping it wholly within the artificial channels 
which society has provided for it. Propinquity, as 
is well known, is always liable to rouse it into 
action even in the most humdrum conditions. 
The disposition of the " any man " to fall in love 
with the " any woman " whom he sees most fre- 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 191 

quently is one of the commonplaces of worldly 
wisdom. So is the disposition of the " any 
woman " to see in the " any man " with whom she 
may be thrown into daily or frequent intercourse, 
a possible lover. On this very solid anthropologi- 
cal fact the code of propriety which in all coun- 
tries regulates the intercourse of the sexes has 
been framed. In semi-barbarous societies it is 
framed by men, is rigid in its requirements and 
Draconian in its penalties. In highly civilized 
societies it is largely framed and enforced by 
women, and though its provisions have been 
greatly relaxed and its sanctions much mitigated, 
nevertheless its basal assumption, as the philoso- 
phers say, remains undisturbed. That assumption 
is that when young persons of both sexes are 
thrown together with nothing to do, they need, 
whether married or single, to be closely super- 
vised. 

This precise situation does not often arise when 
people are living in their homes in their own 
countries. They have their cares and responsi- 
bilities, and perhaps work to do. They are sur- 
rounded by relatives or friends, and feel the har- 
ness of custom and tradition and public opinion in 
nearly every act of their lives. The first step in 
the path of vice or folly draws forth warnings 
which they have been taught by long habit to 



192 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

respect. But when removed from the pressure of 
these time-honored restraints, as in the large 
country-houses in England or on the Continent, 
and as in the fashionable resorts, such as Pau or 
Monte Carlo, or a score of other places which I 
need not enumerate, which in our time are crowded 
with the rich and idle both summer and winter, the 
air becomes charged with amorous electricity ; men 
and women become, consciously or unconsciously, 
ready for amorous adventures. There are few 
women who are not, under such conditions, more 
or less ready for the mild excitement at least of 
repelling unlawful advances, and few or no men 
who do not believe themselves worthy of a bonne 
fortune, and likely to fall in for one any day. 
Hunting, polo, lawn tennis, gambling, dinner-giv- 
ing, all pall in the long run, or are confined to cer- 
tain seasons, but the eiuige Weib remains as a 
perennial resource. The annual social chronicles 
of the Indian sanitaria in " the Hills " and of the 
pleasure resorts of the European continents, con- 
tain illustrations in abundance of the tremen- 
dous strain which an idle and luxurious life puts 
on the bonds of the old morality. The murders, 
the duels, or the elopements which every now and 
then occur, impressive as they are, give but a 
slight idea of the moral turmoil which goes on be- 
low the surface. Every year contributes its list of 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 193 

catastrophes of which the world never hears, of 
work made hopelessly repulsive on the very 
threshold of life, of family peace destroyed be- 
yond recovery, of affections irretrievably diverted 
from their old and lawful channels, of honest 
worth covered with ridicule, of high aspirations 
quenched in a swash of triviality or childish " gay- 
ety." The worship of wealth, in its coarsest and 
most undraped form, too, that is, wealth as a pur- 
veyor of meat, drink, clothing, and ornamentation, 
which goes on in this milieu, " makes hay " of all 
noble standards of individual and social conduct. 

Perhaps the very worst influence of the idler ? 
however, is to be found in the effect of the specta- 
cle of their lives on what is called "the labor 
problem." "The labor problem" is really the 
problem of making the manual laborers of the 
world content with their lot. In my judgment this 
is an insoluble problem. No discoveries nor in- 
ventions will ever solve it as long as population 
continues to press close on the available products 
of human industry. The causes of the dissatisfac- 
tion of the masses with their condition may change 
from age to age, but the dissatisfaction will con- 
tinue, and the blame will be always laid on those 
who have a larger share of the world's goods than 
others. But there is no question that the existing 
discontent is, and not unreasonably, aggravated by 
13 



194 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the spectacle of the enjoyment by the growing idle 
class, of the benefits of the social and political 
organizations, without any contribution worth 
mention to the trouble and cost of maintaining 
these organizations. The taxes paid by the annui- 
tant or rentier class are but a trifling return, in 
reality, for the security they possess for person and 
property. The workers of the world provide 
them with police, with courts of justice, and means 
of travel — in short, every agency which makes 
their enjoyment possible, for sums in cash which 
they would hardly pay to a good club. Seasona- 
bly or unreasonably, the masses resent this more 
and more. It gives mere envy an air of respecta- 
bility and rationality. They say that even if a 
good defence may be made for inequality of condi- 
tions based on inequality of capacity and services, 
there ought not in truly democratic communities, 
to be any people who render no service at all, and 
who allow others to till, and spin and weave, and 
police, and tight, and teach, and invent and dis- 
cover, plough the seas and dig the mines for them, 
while they look on and draw their quarterly divi- 
dends and spend them in childishness ; that we 
shall never have social peace till every man has a 
fair share of the social burdens. 

The arguments in favor of the existence of the 
class called " men of leisure " are familiar to every 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 195 

one. The contributions of this class to civilization 
have been very great. There are books of the 
greatest value to the community which cannot be 
contributed by busy men. It is only the men of 
leisure who can look after the artistic side of life, 
and the artistic side of life has to be cultivated in 
order to keep man above the contented ox or 
porker. The services, too, which they render to 
the state by being allowed to choose their work 
are often of inestimable value. No one can think of 
Darwin's, or Grote's, or Cavour's, or Gladstone's, or 
Howard's, or Motley's pecuniary competency, with- 
out thankfulness. Even the socialists share this 
feeling. It is impossible to say which of all men 
of leisure will turn their leisure to useful account ; 
and it would be therefore dangerous, even if it were 
possible, to make a rule prohibiting their existence. 
The best thing in the world is individual freedom ; 
and a man who is compelled to work by law when 
there is no fear of his becoming dependent on the 
labor of others for a livelihood, is to all intents and 
purposes a slave. Better that ten men should 
" loaf " than that one should lose his liberty. 

But the modern democracy must take on itself 
part of the blame which it throws on the idlers. 
The rich are being gradually and relentlessly ex- 
cluded as a rule from public office in all the demo- 
cratic countries. There are enough well-to-do men 



196 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

of leisure in New York to give us an excellent city 
government without payment, except in the subor- 
dinate places, were the poor willing to give up their 
chance of the salaries. Venice, in its best days, 
secured a large body of good officials by compelling 
men of fortune to serve in the offices to which they 
were elected. Berlin has to-day a first-rate com- 
mon council made up in the same way. But there 
is very little chance of our seeing this system 
spread. The most discouraging phenomena of 
government by universal suffrage thus far, is its 
strong tendency to treat public offices as "plums" 
rather than trusts, to be distributed among poor 
men as rewards for winning elections, and to con- 
sider indifference to the salary as a positive dis- 
qualification. 

As long as this tendency lasts, we fear the alien- 
ation of the rich and their disposition to make 
amusement a serious business will continue, and 
the chief cure will be found only in the resolute 
resistance of the individual conscience. Nothing 
does more in this country to recruit the ranks of 
the pleasure-seekers than the tendency of rich 
fathers, backed up in this by the public generally, 
to treat money-making as the only serious business 
of life. A young man bred in this notion natu- 
rally says to himself when he inherits a fortune : 
" Money-getting, however laudable a pursuit in it- 



IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 197 

self, is surely only incumbent on those who have not 
got money or want more of it than they have got. 
Why should I, who have got all I want, continue 
to work for it? No, I must enjoy it." And when 
he has given himself up to the child's life, buying 
fresh toys every day and throwing them away the 
next, the only thing which excites the wonder of 
those of his friends and neighbors who do not envy 
him, is that he should not have " stayed in busi- 
ness." 

The truth is that there has never been an 
age of the world in which there were such oppor- 
tunities for men of fortune to find enjoyment in 
contributions to the general welfare. To some 
natures philanthropy, pure and simple, is odious, 
but there remain art, literature, science, agriculture, 
education. By this last I do not mean simply the 
instruction of youth either at schools or colleges, 
but also the work of persuasion through voice and 
pen. There never has been in the history of the 
world such a field for orators and writers as a 
democratic country now offers. There is no nobler 
nor more fascinating game than the work of chang- 
ing the opinions of great bodies of men, by induc- 
ing them to discard old beliefs and take on new 
ones, or arresting their rush after strange gods. 
But very few indeed ever take up any such work 
late in life. The taste for it must be formed and 



198 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the equipment provided in youth. Though last, 
not least, the delusion must be got rid of that there 
is no use in trying to act on the minds of one's 
fellow-men unless one can thereby get an office. 
It is this which makes a great many useful young 
men wash their hands of politics and go in for polo 
and tennis and flirtations instead. Official life, as 
our Government is now organized, has no field for 
a really high ambition. Public functionaries are 
becoming more and more the puppets of the man- 
agers outside, and the managers are whatever pub- 
lic opinion lets them be or insists on their being. 
The coming rulers of men are those who mould the 
thoughts or sway the passions of the multitude. 



THE DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN IN A 
DEMOCEACY 

Peehaps I ought not to say it, but college grad- 
uates are not, as a rule, remarkable for the amount 
of knowledge, properly so called, which they bring 
away from the universities. Everything they 
learn there in the way of languages or of science 
makes a comparatively small impression on the 
great mass of them. The great use of the college 
course is the formation of the habit of attention 
and study at the age when mental and other habits 
are most easily formed. But a college education 
has a perceptible general effect on the intellectual 
outlook. Its most marked effect on men in rela- 
tion to their duties to the community at large, is in 
raising their standards. Their notions of how 
things ought to be done are changed. They ex- 
pect a good deal more in the character and attain- 
ments of public men, and in the order of public 
business. The municipal government, for in- 
stance, which the educated men would set up, if 
they had their way, would be something consider- 



200 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ably different from any municipal government now 
in existence. Congress and the State legislatures, 
too, would be, if" the suffrage were confined to col- 
lege graduates, composed of another class of men 
than that which now fills them. A Tery large por- 
tion of our present legislation would never be en- 
acted, and the probabilities are that the ceremonial 
side of the government would be much enlarged. 
I remember that two or three years ago President 
Eliot wrote in The Forum* pointing out that our 
municipal government would never be what it 
ought to be until all our city officials had received 
a special training for their work, and he mentioned 
the various kinds of training which they needed. 
Now this was distinctly the college graduate's 
view of the matter. The popular mind was not 
then occupied with the need or the difficulty of 
getting trained men for such work. It would have 
been satisfied with men of ordinary honesty. The 
notion that trained men were a possibility, proba- 
bly never occurred to the bulk of the citizens. 

We should probably, in a college-graduate gov- 
ernment, witness the disappearance from legisla- 
tion of nearly all acts and resolutions which are 
passed for what is called " politics;" that is, for 
the purpose of pleasing certain bodies of voters, 
without any reference to their real value as contri- 
*Vol. XII., p. 153, October, 1891. 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 201 

butions to the work of government. This would 
of course effect a very great reduction in the size 
of the annual statute-book. For, to the mind of 
the ordinary legislator of to day, the duty of pleas- 
ing the voters is even more obligatory than the 
duty of furnishing them with good government. In 
this duty of pleasing the voters there is no ques- 
tion that a college education as a rule unfits a man. 
He cannot discharge it without a fight with his 
ideals formed at a susceptible age. James Eussell 
Lowell furnishes an illustration of my meaning. 
He was unquestionably as patriotic an American 
as ever lived, and a thorough Democrat. Democ- 
racy has never received so fine a tribute as he paid 
to it in Birmingham. But, somehow, as an edu- 
cated man, he was out of tune with the multitude. 
The West never quite took to him. The New York 
Tribune denied him even the right to be considered 
" a good American." Senator Sherman and other 
Republicans wrote " Ichabod " on him when he sup- 
ported Mr. Cleveland. The cause of all this really 
was that his political standards differed from 
theirs. He lived in an earlier republic of the 
mind, in which the legislation was done by first- 
class men, whom the people elected and followed. 
In a republic in which the multitude told the legis- 
lators what to do, he never really was at home. 
This brings to me the question, what is really 



202 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the attitude of educated men toward universal suf- 
frage to-day? As a general rule I think they 
really mistrust or regret it, but accept it as the 
inevitable. Probably no system of government 
was ever so easy to attack and ridicule, but no 
government has ever come upon the world from 
which there seemed so little prospect of escape. 
It has, in spite of its imperfections and oddities, 
something of the majesty of doom, and nobody 
now pretends that any people can avoid it. There 
has been, however, a notable change within forty 
years, in the opinion of the educated class, as to 
its value, owing to its numerous mistakes ; but, 
curiously enough, these mistakes seem often to be 
due to the difficulty experienced in finding out 
what its mind is. Its mass in countries in which 
it exists, is so large that the process of interrogat- 
ing it is one of extraordinary difficulty even for 
the most expert. Politicians, of all varieties, think 
they know what the people think upon any given 
question of the day, but most of them are always 
wrong. There could not be a better illustration of 
this than the mistake made by Senator Hill, Gov- 
ernor Flower, and other politicians in this State 
about Maynard's nomination. They had the deep- 
est interest in knowing what the popular judgment 
on this nomination would be, but fell into an im- 
mense error about it. 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 203 

This difficulty is not likely to decrease, and is 
likely to produce a great many legislative follies ; 
because, unhappily, it seems to be the way of 
most politicians in all countries, when puzzled 
or uncertain about the drift of public sentiment, 
to choose the course which seems the least wise 
or most childish, meaning by that the course 
which seems to promise most immediate gratifi- 
cation, or to display most indifference to remoter 
results. One consequence of this is that uni- 
versal suffrage has taken the blame of a great 
many mistakes for which it is not responsible, and 
which have come to pass simply owing to want of 
skill in questioning it on the part of law-makers. 
But, after all allowances and excuses have been 
made, its errors are sure to be frequent and on a 
considerable scale. We may expect, for instance, 
such mistakes as our silver policy, with increasing 
frequency, because the politics of the world are 
becoming more and more a controversy between 
rich and poor. The influential and the rich men 
are taking the place of the feudal baron and the 
absolute monarch as objects of popular attack, and 
moderate physical comforts for all, or a " living 
wage," have taken the place of political liberty. 
But the rich man cannot and will not be openly 
robbed. He runs no risk of having his head cut 
off, or his property confiscated. He will probably 



204 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

be got at through experiments in taxation, or in 
currency, which unfortunately rarely reach the 
precise objects at which they are aimed, and 
sooner or later, like the silver purchases, involve 
the whole community in great distress. 

The idea that distribution must be, in some man- 
ner, reformed, is taking greater and greater hold 
of the world, and the popular mind is so much im- 
pressed with what seems to be the injustice of the 
present system, that hardly any attention is paid 
to the size of the earth's dividend. And yet, to 
divide among the people of every country all the 
accumulated wealth there is in it, or to divide 
among them the annual yield of its land and labor, 
is one of the simplest of arithmetical problems. In 
no case would any such dividend make any material 
change in the condition of the great bulk of the 
population. There is no deduction from the opera- 
tion of nature more certain than that the earth is 
not meant to afford much more than a fair subsist- 
ence to the dwellers on it. The mass of mankind 
have been poor from the earliest ages, simply be- 
cause they multiply close up to the provision which 
the earth normally makes for them. They have 
always done so, and probably will always do so, in 
every country. It is true that their condition has 
improved since the introduction of steam into the 
work of production ; but their content has not in- 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 205 

creased, and the contrast between their mode of 
life and that of the very rich remains about the 
same. There is no wider interval now between the 
house of the modern rich man and the laborer's cot- 
tage than there was between the castle and the hut 
of the Middle Ages. If all that needed to be done 
to make everybody comfortable and contented was 
to pull down the rich man's palace, and decree that 
no more should be built, the problem of modern 
politics would be easy. But the truth is that there 
is no cure for the evils of our present condition 
but a great increase in the produce of the earth, 
without any corresponding increase in population, 
and without any abatement in the industry, enter- 
prise, and energy of the existing workers. "When 
Ave think of the enormous resources of the globe 
which are still untouched, we are apt to forget that, 
in order to get at them, we have to go on breeding 
an increased number of men and women, who will 
keep alive, generation after generation, the old 
story of unequal and unjust distribution. 

But to divide the earth's products equally, or 
anywhere near equally, among the people, would 
be to ignore the claims of superior talent, industry, 
or frugality upon the larger share, or, in other 
words, to ignore differences of character. I think 
most educated men will agree that in the long run 
our civilization could not stand this. All progress 



206 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

has been made hitherto on the competitive prin- 
ciple, which means giving the prize to the best 
man ; and we can hardly conceive of its being made 
in any other way. To prescribe that no one shall 
do better than any one else, is to reproduce China. 
Now, in the presence of all this, the role of the 
educated man is really a very difficult one. No in- 
telligent man can or ought to ignore the part which 
hope of better things plays in our present social 
system. It has largely, among the working classes, 
taken the place of religious belief. They have 
brought their heaven down to earth ; and are liter- 
ally looking forward to a sort of New Jerusalem, in 
which all comforts and many of the luxuries of 
life, will be within easy reach of all. The great 
success of Utopian works like Bellamy's shows 
the hold which these ideas have taken of the popu- 
lar mind. The world has to have a religion of some 
kind, and the hope of better food and clothing, 
more leisure, and a greater variety of amusements, 
has become the religion of the working classes. 
Hope makes them peaceful, industrious, and re- 
signed under present suffering. A Frenchman 
saw a ragged pauper spend his last few cents on a 
lottery ticket, and asked him how he could com- 
mit such a folly. " In order to have something to 
hope for," he said. And from this point of view 
the outlay was undoubtedly excusable. It is liter- 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 207 

ally hope which makes the world go round, and 
one of the hardest things an educated man who 
opens his mouth about public affairs has to do, is 
to say one word or anything to dampen or destroy 
it. Yet his highest duty is to speak the truth. 

Luckily, there is one truth which can always be 
spoken without offence, and that is that od the 
whole the race advances through the increase of 
intelligence and the improvement of character, and 
has not advanced in any other w r ay. The great 
amelioration in the condition of the working 
classes in Europe within this century, including 
the increasing power of the trades-unions, is the 
result not of any increase of benevolence in the 
upper classes, but of the growth of knowledge and 
self-reliance and foresight among the working 
classes themselves. The changes in legislation 
which have improved their condition are changes 
which they have demanded. When a workingman 
becomes a capitalist, and raises himself in any way 
above his early condition, it is rarely the result of 
miracle or accident. It is due to his superior in- 
telligence and thrift. Nothing, on the whole, can 
be more delusive than official and other inquiries 
into the labor problem, through commissions and 
legislative committees. They all assume that there 
is some secret in the relations of labor and capital 
which can be found out by taking testimony. But 



208 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

they never find anything out. Their reports during 
the last fifty years would make a small library, but 
they never tell us anything new. They are meant 
to pacify and amuse the laborer, and they do 
so ; but to their constant failure to do anything 
more we owe some of the Socialist movement. 
The Socialists believe this failure due to want of 
will, and that Karl Marx has discovered the great 
truth of the situation, which is, that labor is en- 
titled to the whole product. The great law which 
Nature seems to have prescribed for the govern- 
ment of the world, and the only law of human 
society which we are able to extract from history, 
is that the more intelligent and thoughtful of the 
race shall inherit the earth and have the best time, 
and that all others shall find life on the whole dull 
and unprofitable. Socialism is an attempt to con- 
travene this law and ensure a good time to every- 
body independently of character and talents ; but 
Nature will see that she is not frustrated or brought 
to nought, and I do not think educated men should 
ever cease to call attention to this fact, that is, 
ever cease to preach hopefulness, not to everybody, 
but to good people. This is no bar to benevolence 
to bad people or any people, but our first duty is 
loyalty to the great qualities of our kind, to the 
great human virtues, which raise the civilized man 
above the savage. 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 209 

There is probably no government in the world 
to-day as stable as that of the United States. The 
chief advantage of democratic government is, in a 
country like this, the enormous force it can com- 
mand on an emergency. By " emergency " I mean 
the suppression of an insurrection or the conduct 
of a foreign war. But it is not equally strong in 
the ordinary work of administration. A good many 
governments, by far inferior to it in strength, fill 
the offices, collect the taxes, administer justice, and 
do the work of legislation with much greater effi- 
ciency. One cause of this inefficiency is that the 
popular standard in such matters is low, and that 
it resents dissatisfaction as an assumption of su- 
periority. When a man says these and those things 
ought not to be, his neighbors, who find no fault 
with them, naturally accuse him of giving himself 
airs. It seems as if he thought he knew more 
than they did, and was trying to impose his plans 
on them. The consequence is, that, in a land of 
pure equality, as this is, critics are always an un- 
popular class, and criticism is, in some sense, an 
odious work. The only condemnation passed on 
the governmental acts or systems is apt to come 
from the opposite party in the form of what is 
called " arraignment," which generally consists in 
wholesale abuse of the party in power, treating all 

their acts, small or great, as due to folly or deprav- 
14 



210 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ity, and all their public re en as either fools or 
knaves. Of course this makes but small impres- 
sion on the public mind. It is taken to indicate 
not so much a desire to improve the public service 
as to get hold of the offices, and has, as a general 
rule, but little effect. Parties lose their hold on 
power through some conspicuously obnoxious acts 
or failures ; never, or very rarely, through the judg- 
ments passed on them by hostile writers or orators. 
And yet nothing is more necessary to successful 
government than abundant criticism from sources 
not open to the suspicion of particular interest. 
There is nothing which bad governments so much 
dislike and resent as criticism, and have in past ages 
taken so much paius to put down. In fact, a his- 
tory of the civil liberty would consist, largely, of 
an account of the resistance to criticism on the 
part of rulers. One of the first acts of a successful 
tyranny or despotism is always the silencing of the 
press or the establishment of a censorship. 

Popular objection to criticism is, however, sense- 
less, because it is through criticism — that is, 
through discrimination between two things, cus- 
toms or courses — that the race has managed to 
come out of the woods and lead a civilized life. 
The first man who objected to the general naked- 
ness, and advised his fellows to put on clothes, was 
the first critic. Criticism of a high tariff recom- 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 211 

mends a low tariff; criticism of monarchy recom- 
mends a republic ; criticism of vice recommends 
virtue. In fact almost every act of life in the prac- 
tice of a profession or the conduct of a business, 
condemns one course and suggests another. The 
word means judging, and judgment is the highest 
of the human faculties, the one which most distin- 
guishes us from the animals. 

There is, probably, nothing from which the pub- 
lic service of the country suffers more to-day than 
the silence of its educated class ; that is, the small 
amount of criticism which comes from the disin- 
terested and competent sources. It is a very rare 
thing for an educated man to say anything pub- 
licly about the questions of the day. He is ab- 
sorbed in science, or art, or literature, in the prac- 
tice of his profession, or in the conduct of his 
business ; and if he has any interest at all in pub- 
lic affairs, it is a languid one. He is silent because 
he does not much care, or because he does not 
wish to embarrass the administration or " hurt the 
party," or because he does not feel that any thing- 
he could say would make much difference. So 
that, on the whole, it is very rarely that the in- 
structed opinion of the country is ever heard on 
any subject. The report of the Bar Association 
on the nomination of Maynard in New York was a 
remarkable exception to this rule. Some improve- 



212 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ment in this direction has been made by the ap- 
pearance of the set of people known as the 
"Mugwumps," who are, in the main, men of culti- 
vation. They have been denned in various ways. 
They are known to the masses mainly as " kickers ;" 
that is, dissatisfied, querulous people, who com- 
plain of everybody and cannot submit to party 
discipline. But they are the only critics who do 
not criticise in the interest of party, but simply in 
that of good government. They are a kind of 
personage whom the bulk of the voters know noth- 
ing about, and find it difficult to understand, and 
consequently load with ridicule and abuse. But 
their movement, though its visible recognizable 
effects on elections may be small, has done ines- 
timable service in slackening the bonds of party 
discipline, in making the expression of open dissent 
from party programmes respectable and common, 
and in increasing the unreliable vote in large States 
like New York. It is of the last importance that 
this unreliable vote — that is, the vote which party 
leaders cannot count on with certainty — should be 
large in such States. The mere fear of it prevents 
a great many excesses. 

But in criticism one always has hard work in 
steering a straight course between optimism and 
pessimism. These are the Scylla and Charybdis 
of the critic's career. Almost every man who 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 213 

thinks or speaks about public affairs is either an 
optimist or a pessimist ; which he is, depends a 
good deal on temperament, but often on character. 
The political jobber or corruptionist is almost al- 
ways an optimist. So is the prosperous business 
man. So is nearly every politician, because the 
optimist is nearly always the more popular of the 
two. As a general rule, people like cheerful men 
and the promise of good times. The kill-joy and 
the bearer of bad news has always been an odious 
character. But for the cultivated man there is no 
virtue in either optimism or pessimism. Some 
people think it a duty to be optimistic, and for 
some people it may be a duty; but one of the 
great uses of education is to teach us to be neither 
one nor the other. In the management of our per- 
sonal affairs, we try to be neither one nor the other. 
In business, a persistent and uproarious optimist 
would certainly have poor credit. And why ? Be- 
cause in business the trustworthy man, as every- 
body knows, is the man who sees things as they 
are ; and to see things as they are, without glamour 
or illusion, is the first condition of worldly success. 
It is absolutely essential in war, in finance, in law, 
in every field of human activity in which the future 
has to be thought of and provided for. It is just 
as essential in politics. The only reason why it is 
not thought as essential in politics is, the punish- 



214 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ment for failure or neglect comes in politics more 
slowly. 

The pessimist has generally a bad name, but 
there is a good deal to be said for him. To take a 
recent illustration, the man who took pessimistic 
views of the silver movement was for near]y twenty 
years under a cloud. This gloomy anticipation of 
1873 was not realized until 1893. For a thousand 
years after Marcus Aurelius, the pessimist, if I 
may use the expression, was "cock of the walk." 
He certainly has no reason to be ashamed of his 
role in the Eastern world for a thousand years after 
the Mohammedan Hegira. In Italy and Spain he 
has not needed to hang his head since the Kenais- 
sance. In fact, if we take various nations and 
long reaches of time, we shall find that the gloomy 
man has been nearly as often justified by the 
course of events as the cheerful one. Neither of 
them has any special claim to a hearing on public 
affairs. A persistent optimist, although he may 
be a most agreeable man in family life, is likely, 
in business or politics, to be just as foolish and 
unbearable as a persistent pessimist. He is as 
much out of harmony with the order of nature. 
The universe is not governed on optimistic any 
more than on pessimistic principles. The best 
and wisest of men make their mistakes and have 
their share of sorrow and sickness and losses. So, 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 215 

also, the most happily situated nations must suffer 
from internal discord, the blunders of statesmen, 
and the madness of the people. What Cato said 
in the Senate of the conditions of success, " vigi- 
lando, agendo, bene consulendo, ijrospere omnia 
cedunt" is as true to-day as it was two thousand 
years ago. We must remember that, though the 
optimist may be the pleasantest man to have about 
us, he is the least likely to take precautions ; that 
is, the least likely to watch and work for success. 
We owe a great deal of our slovenly legislation to 
his presence in large numbers in Congress and the 
legislatures. The great suffering through which 
we are now passing, in consequence of the per- 
sistence in our silver purchases, is the direct result 
of unreasoning optimism. Its promoters disre- 
garded the warnings of economists and financiers 
because they believed that — somehow, they did not 
know how — the thing w T ould come out right in the 
end. This silver collapse, together with the Civil 
War over slavery, are striking illustrations to occur 
in one century, of the fact that, if things come out 
right in the end, it is often after periods of great 
suffering and disaster. Could people have fore- 
seen how the slavery controversy would end, what 
frantic efforts would have been made for peaceful 
abolition ! Could people have foreseen the panic 
of last year, with its widespread disaster, what 



216 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

haste would have been made to stop the silver pur- 
chases ! And yet the experience of mankind afford- 
ed abundant reason for anticipating both results. 

This leads me to say that the reason why edu- 
cated men should try and keep a fair mental bal- 
ance between both pessimism and optimism is that 
there has come over the world in the last twenty- 
five or thirty years a very great change of opinion 
touching the relations of the government to the com- 
munity. When Europe settled down to peaceful 
work after the great wars of the French [Revolu- 
tion, it was possessed with the idea that the free- 
dom of the individual was all that was needed for 
public prosperity and private happiness. The 
old government interference with people's move- 
ments and doings was supposed to be the reason 
why nations had not been happy in the past. 
This became the creed, in this country, of the 
Democratic party which came into existence after 
the foundation of the Federal government. At 
the same time there grew up here the popular idea 
of the American character, in which individual- 
ism was the most marked trait. If you are not fa- 
miliar with it in your own time, you may remember 
it in the literature of the earlier half of the cen- 
tury. The typical American was always the archi- 
tect of his own fortunes. He sailed the seas and 
penetrated the forest, and built cities and lynched 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 217 

the horse-thieves, and fought the Indians and 
dug the mines, without anybody's help or support. 
He had even an ill-concealed contempt for regular 
troops, as men under control and discipline. He 
scorned government for any other purposes than 
security and the administration of justice. This 
was the kind of American that Tocqueville found 
here in 1833. He says : * 

"The European often sees in the public functionaries 
simply force ; the American sees nothing but law. One 
may then say that in America a man never obeys a man, or 
anything but justice and law. Consequently he has formed 
of himself an opinion which is often exaggerated, but is 
always salutary. He trusts without fear to his own 
strength, which appears to him equal to anything. A pri- 
vate individual conceives some sort of enterprise. Even if 
this enterprise have some sort of connection with the pub- 
lic welfare, it never occurs to him to address himself to 
the government in order to obtain its aid. He makes his 
plan known, offers to carry it out, calls other individuals 
to his aid, and struggles with all his might against any ob- 
stacles there may be in his way. Often, without doubt, he 
succeeds less well than the State would in his place ; but 
in the long run the general result of individual enterprises 
far surpasses anything the government could do." 

Now there is no doubt that if this type of char- 
acter has not passed away, it has been greatly 
modified ; and it has been modified by two agencies 

* Democracy in America, Vol. I., p. 157. 



218 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

— the "labor problem," as it is called, and legisla- 
tive protection to native industry. I am not going 
to make an argument about the value of this pro- 
tection in promoting native industry, or about its 
value from the industrial point of view. We may 
or we may not owe to it the individual progress 
and prosperity of the United States. About that 
I do not propose to say anything. What I want 
to say is that the doctrine that it is a function of 
government, not simply to foster industry in gen- 
eral, but to consider the case of every particular 
industry, and give it the protection that it needs, 
could not be preached and practised for thirty 
years in a community like this, without modifying 
the old American conception of the relation of the 
government to the individual. It makes the gov- 
ernment, in a certain sense, a partner in every in- 
dustrial enterprise, and makes every Presidential 
election an affair of the pocket to every miner and 
manufacturer and to his men ; for the men have for 
fully thirty years been told that the amount of their 
wages would depend, to a certain extent, at least, 
on the way the election went. The notion that 
the government owes assistance to individuals in 
carrying on business and making a livelihood has, 
in fact, largely through the tariff discussions, per- 
meated a very large class of the community, and 
has materially changed what I may call the Amer- 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 219 

ican outlook. It has greatly reinforced among the 
foreign-born population the socialistic ideas which 
many bring here with them, of the powers and 
duties of the State toward labor, for it is preached 
vehemently by the employing class. 

What makes this look the more serious is that 
our political and social manners are not adapted 
to it. In Europe, the State is possessed of an ad- 
ministrative machine which has a finish, efficacy, 
and permanence unknown here. Tocqueville com- 
ments on its absence among us, and it is, as all the 
advocates of civil-service reform know, very difficult 
to supply. All the agencies of the government 
suffer from the imposition on them of what I may 
call non-American duties. For instance, a custom- 
house organized as a political machine was never 
intended to collect the enormous sum of duties 
which must pass through its hands under our tar- 
iff. A post-office whose master has to be changed 
every four years to "placate" Tammany, or the 
anti-Snappers, or any other body of politicians, 
was never intended to handle the huge mass which 
American mails have now become. One of the 
greatest objections to the income tax is the prying 
into people's affairs which it involves. No man 
likes to tell what his income is to every stranger, 
much less to a politician, which our collectors are 
sure to be. Secrecy on the part of the collector 



220 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

is, in fact, essential to reconcile people to it in 
England or Germany, where it is firmly estab- 
lished ; but our collectors sell their lists to the 
newspapers in order to make the contributors 
pay up. 

In all these things we are trying to meet the 
burden and responsibilities of much older societies 
with the machinery of a much earlier and simpler 
state of things. It is high time to halt in this 
progress until our administrative system has been 
brought up to the level even of our present require- 
ments. It is quite true that, with our system of 
State and Federal Constitutions laying prohibi- 
tions on the Legislature and Congress, any great 
extension of the sphere of government in our time 
seems very unlikely. Yet the assumption by Con- 
gress, with the support of the Supreme Court, of 
the power to issue paper money in time of 7 peace, 
the power to make prolonged purchases of a com- 
modity like silver, the power to impose an income 
tax, to execute great public works, and to protect 
native industry, are powers large enough to effect 
a great change in the constitution of society and 
in the distribution of wealth, such as, it is safe to 
say, in the present state of human culture, no gov- 
ernment ought to have and exercise. 

One hears every day from educated people some 
addition to the number of things which " govern- 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 221 

merits " ought to do, but for which any government 
we have at present is totally unfit. One listens to 
them with amazement, when looking at the material 
of which our government is composed, for the mat- 
ter of that, of which all governments are composed, 
for I suppose there is no question that all legisla- 
tive bodies in the world have in twenty years run 
down in quality. The parliamentary system is ap- 
parently failing to meet the demands of modern 
democratic society, and is falling into some disre- 
pute ; but it would seem as if there was at present 
just as little chance of a substitute of any kind as 
of the dethronement of universal suffrage. It will 
probably last indefinitely, and be as good or as bad 
as its constituents make it. But this probable 
extension of the powers and functions of govern- 
ment make more necessary than ever a free expres- 
sion of opinion, and especially of educated opinion. 
We may rail at " mere talk " as much as we please, 
but the probability is that the affairs of nations 
and of men will be more and more regulated by 
talk. The amount of talk which is now expended 
on air subjects of human interest — and in "talk" 
I include contributions to periodical literature — 
is something of which a previous age has had the 
smallest conception. Of course it varies infinitely 
in quality. A very large proportion of it does no 
good beyond relieving the feelings of the talker. 



222 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

Political philosophers maintain, and with good 
reason, that one of its greatest uses is keeping 
down discontent under popular government. It is 
undoubtedly true that it is an immense relief to a 
man with a grievance to express his feelings about it 
in words, even if he knows that his words will have 
no immediate effect. Self love is apt to prevent 
most men from thinking that anything they say 
with passion or earnestness will utterly and finally 
fail. But still it is safe to suppose that one -half 
of the talk of the world on subjects of general in- 
terest is waste. But the other half certainly tells. 
We know this from the change in ideas from gen- 
eration to generation. We see that opinions which 
at one time everybody held became absurd in the 
course of half a century — opinions about religion 
and morals and manners and government. Nearly 
every man of my age can recall old opinions of his 
own, on subjects of general interest, which he 
once thought highly respectable, and which he is 
now almost ashamed of having ever held. He 
does not remember when he changed them, or why, 
but somehow they have passed away from him. 
In communities these changes are often very strik- 
ing. The transformation, for instance, of the 
England of Cromwell into the England of Queen 
Anne, or of the New England of Cotton Mather 
into the New England of Theodore Parker and 



EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 223 

Emerson, was very extraordinary, but it would be 
very difficult to say in detail what brought it about, 
or when it began. Lecky has some curious obser- 
vations, in his " History of Rationalism," on these 
silent changes in new beliefs apropos of the dis- 
appearance of the belief in witchcraft. Nobod}^ 
could say what had swept it away, but it appeared 
that in a certain year people were ready to burn 
old women as witches, and a few years later were 
ready to laugh at or pity any one who thought old 
women could be witches. "At one period," says 
he, " we find every one disposed to believe in 
witches; at a later period we find this predispo- 
sition has silently passed away." The belief in 
witchcraft may perhaps be considered a somewhat 
violent illustration, like the change in public opin- 
ion about slavery in this country. But there can 
be no doubt that it is talk — somebody's, anybody's, 
everybody's talk — by which these changes are 
wrought, by which each generation comes to feel 
and think differently from its predecessor. No 
one ever talks freely about anything without con- 
tributing something, let it be ever so little, to the 
unseen forces which carry the race on to its final 
destiny. Even if he does not make a positive im- 
pression, he counteracts or modifies some other 
impression, or sets in some train of ideas in some 
one else, which helps to change the face of the 



234 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

world. So I shall, in disregard of the great lauda- 
tion of silence which filled the earth in the days 
of Carlyle, say that one of the functions of an edu- 
cated man is to talk, and, of course, he should try 
to talk wisely. 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF 
SOCIALISM? 

If I were to visit a friend of very moderate 
means, who was living very simply in a flat, in a 
remote part of the city, and he were to tell me 
that he was going to move into a house on Fifth 
or Madison Avenue ; that he was tired, as was his 
family, of the very restricted life he had been lead- 
ing; that he meant to give his children better 
quarters, better clothing, a better education, and 
more frequent access to the world of fashion and 
amusements, than they had previously had, I 
should conclude that he had received, in some 
way, a considerable addition to his income. But 
if I found, on inquiry, that not one cent or only 
a few hundred dollars had been added to it, I 
should conclude that the poor felloAv was insane ; 
that he was laboring under the well-known hallu- 
cination called plutomania. 

Now I am very much in the same state of mind 

about the Socialists and ethical economists that I 

would be about him. I have, during the last two 
15 



226 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

years, been reading a great deal of socialistic litera- 
ture, ending the other day with Kidd's " Social 
Evolution." The principal thing which I have 
learned from it all is that we are on the eve of a 
great social transformation. The regime of slavery 
has passed away ; and the regime of feudalism has 
passed away ; and the regime of competition is 
to pass away, and that before very long. The 
process began a few years ago, I am told, with 
the overthrow of the Manchester School. That 
school taught the doctrine of laissez /aire as the 
best rule of living for the community. It taught 
individualism. It taught that the least possible 
government was the best. It reasoned about all 
social topics from the "economic man," a person 
whose main desire was to get money with the 
least possible amount of exertion. It was willing 
to let the ablest man get the best things in life, 
and so on. 

I learn that this is all now to be changed, not 
because it is not scientific, but because it is 
disagreeable or inhuman. Government is to in- 
terfere a good deal. It is first of all to take 
possession of the gas- and water- works, the rail- 
roads and telegraphs of the country. By and by 
it is to take possession of all the instruments of 
production, and see that nobody ever wants work. 
All the very rich men and the idle men are to dis- 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 227 

appear, and everybody is to be moderately well 
off. The differences, whatever they are, between 
workingmen and other people are to come to an 
end. According to Kidd, the workingmen are to 
have the same " social position " as every one else, 
because " moderate income is to give as good a 
social position as a large one." " The position of 
the lower classes is to be raised at the expense of 
the wealthier classes." " Education in its highest 
forms " — which I suppose means college education 
— is to be within the reach of everybody, and not, as 
now, the privilege of the well-to-do only. w The 
sphere of action of the State is to extend to every 
department of our social life." I might quote 
indefinitely to this effect from Marshall, from the 
Fabian "school" of economists, the "historical 
school" in Germany, and the Ely " school" in this 
country. In the world which they not only prom- 
ise us, but which they say is now really near at 
hand, there will be no distinction of classes. 
Workingmen and their children will have exactly 
the same opportunities which professional men 
and people of moderate means now have. They 
will have their dinners, their balls, their theatres, 
their summer trips, their short hours of labor, their 
libraries, museums, and so forth. I am told this 
great change is coming very fast, though, as far as 
I can see, the signs of it are only to be found, as 



228 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

yet, in authors' studies and in college lecture- 
rooms. Mr. Kidd's authorities about it are chiefly 
the monthly magazines, Marshall, and an interview 
with W. T. Stead. The Fabian School cites no 
authorities at all, producing the whole change de- 
ductively out of its own head. Professor Ely 
bases his beliefs also on his own intuitions. A 
very large part of the work is to be wrought 
through " ethics," or "the science of ethics," which, 
I believe, is the name given by the various schools 
to the opinions of some of their members about 
the injustices of the competitive or present system. 
I do not, as I have said, see any signs of the 
new regime in the world outside, except in ex- 
tension of government interference to some en- 
terprises, " affected," as our courts say, " with a 
public use." But no hard-and-fast line between 
government business and private business was 
ever drawn, even by the unfortunate Manchester 
School. What John Stuart Mill — whom I suppose 
I may describe as speaking for them, at all events 
to some extent — said, was that the question what 
things government should take charge of itself, 
and not leave to private enterprise, is to be settled 
by judgment, just as the question what things the 
head of a family should buy and what make at 
home, has to be settled by judgment. Government 
is, from the outset, a joint-stock enterprise. To 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 229 

say that it may run a post-office, but must on no 
account carry on a gas-factory or water-works, 
would be absurd. But whether, besides running a 
post-office, it should also run gas-works and water- 
works, depends on time and place and circum- 
stances. To allow the city government of New 
York to do things which it is perfectly safe to let 
the corporation of Birmingham or Berlin do, 
would be extremely foolish. The truth is that the 
business of man in this world is to make himself 
as happy and comfortable as liability to death and 
disease will let him, and not to carry out the 
theories of " schools " or doctrinaires. 

I make this little digression to get rid of the 
supposition that anything the civilized govern- 
ments of the world are doing — and have done — for 
the convenience of their citizens, is to be consid- 
ered the beginning of any great "movement "or 
" evolution." They have done nothing as yet 
which interferes seriously with any man's rational 
liberty. It makes no difference to me where I get 
my gas, or water, or transportation, provided I get 
it good and pure, provided I am not forced to take 
it if I do not want it, and provided I am not com- 
pelled to pay for anybody else's supply. I may 
say much the same thing of the education of chil- 
dren. Numerous experiments have shown me in 
various countries that if the State does not under- 



230 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

take tlie education of children, they will not be 
educated, and I am so sensible of the value of 
education to our civilization that I am well satis- 
fied if the State should do it ; nay, I insist that 
the State shall do it. I maintain, therefore, that 
no beginning of an evolution, or of an organic 
change in human society, has yet been made by 
any State. Whatever we are to have in that line 
is still to come, and it is of what is to come — that 
is, of what we are promised or threatened with — 
that I here concern myself. 

As I said at the beginning of this article, when 
a man is about to move into a larger house and 
change his whole manner of life, he is, if sane, sure 
to ask himself what the change will cost, that is, 
what increase in his expenditures it will make 
necessary. If sane, also, he will follow this ques- 
tion by another, namely, Have I got the money? 
Now, in reading these stories to which I have 
referred, of the social evolution through which 
modern communities are to pass shortly, I find 
absolutely no allusion to cost. It is quite evident 
that, when the change comes about, it will make a 
great increase in the mere living expenses of every 
civilized population, without any increase of in- 
come that I can see or hear of. In this it will 
differ from all previous evolutions or revolutions. 
When the world gave up slavery, it substituted for 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 231 

a very wasteful form of labor a much more pro- 
ductive oue. When, in the eighteenth century, it 
emancipated the peasantry from the kings and 
nobles, it gave a great impetus to their industry. 
It relieved them of enormous burdens incurred for 
the benefit of idle and frivolous men, and it greatly 
increased the motives for saving. The French 
Eevolution gave a powerful stimulus to agricult- 
ure, and much enlarged the income of the work- 
ing farmer. In like manner, in England, the 
introduction of the factory regime made large ad- 
ditions to the national income, and, through this, 
raised the wages and the standard of living of the 
working population. What Sidney Godolphin 
Osborne did by sending the Wiltshire farm-labor- 
ers to the North tells the whole story. In fact, 
the history of all the social and industrial changes 
of the civilized world during the past hundred 
years is, in the main, the history of great improve- 
ments in money-making, the history of additions 
both to the national and the individual income. 
The Manchester School has been much blamed for 
attaching too much importance to this, for think- 
ing too much of additions to wealth without con- 
cerning itself as to the manner in which it was dis- 
tributed. I am not concerned to defend it against 
this charge. My point is, that, ever since the fall 
of the Roman Empire, changes in the social con- 



232 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

dition of the civilized world have meant great im- 
provements in the social income. No matter who 
got the money, more of it came in. Everybody 
who changed his style of living — barring, of course, 
spendthrifts and swindlers — did so because he 
knew his means permitted it. 

The peculiarity of the social evolution which the 
philosophers say is now impending is, that it is to 
be not a money-making, but a spending evolution. 
Everybody is to live a great deal better than he 
has been in the habit of living, and to have far 
more fun. Poverty is to disappear, and real des- 
titution — what the French call " la miser e " — to 
become unknown except as the result of gross mis- 
conduct. I was one day last winter in the Univer- 
sity Settlement in Delancey Street, New York, 
and paid a visit to the rooms in the top story of 
the building occupied by Dr. Stanton Coit and his 
fellow-laborers. They were very neatly and com- 
fortably furnished, but perfectly simple and plain. 
Dr. Coit explained to me that the aim of those 
who furnished them was to show the kind of rooms 
every workingman would have "if justice were 
done." I have since inquired what the rent of 
those rooms would be to-day in that neighbor- 
hood, and am told it would be about $750 a year, 
or about $14.50 per week. But I am also told that 
$14.50 is about the rent which the better class of 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM:? 233 

laborers now pay for their rooms per month. The 
general run of unskilled laborers do not pay over 
$10 per month ; so that, to do "justice " to a work- 
ingman in this one particular, would cost some- 
body about $43 a month. Who is this to be? 
A rent of $58 per month ought, according to 
the ordinary calculations, to argue an income of 
$290 per month. What workingman gets this? 
If he does not get it, and ought to have it, who is 
keeping him out of it ? 

What is the real working-class trouble ? What 
is it that makes their condition a "problem?" 
Why has it become a question of growing impor- 
tance in the politics of all European countries, as 
well as in our own ? Why are so many books and 
pamphlets written about it? Why do so many 
people feel or affect a deep interest in it ? Why 
does it call out so much " ethical " discussion ? 
Why are we threatened with " social evolution " as 
a means of settling it ? 

The answer to all these questions is very simple. 
It is the,, workingman's want of money which 
makes him the object of so much pity, and dread, 
and speculation. If he were better paid — as well 
paid as a clerk, a clergyman, a lawyer, a doctor, a 
business man — all the fuss we make about him 
would be an impertinence. We should bestow no 
consideration on his food, or clothing, or educa- 



234 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

tion, or on his " elevation," or on the elevation of 
his family. We should have no "ethical con- 
cepts" about him. So that the labor question is 
the question why the workingman does not have 
more money. The answer is that he gets now all 
there is for him, and that, if he is to have more, it 
must come from some great and sudden increase 
of production unattended with a great increase of 
population. The income of this and every other 
country in the world, since the plunder of foreign 
nations has ceased, is the product of its land and 
labor. Some of this income goes to pay wages, 
some goes to repair machinery and buildings, and 
some goes to pay profits to capital, or, in other 
words, to reward men for saving or for supplying 
long-felt wants. Consequently, to do justice to the 
laborer and greatly increase his comforts, so that 
he shall be as well off as anybody else, we must cut 
down the profits or interest on capital, or seize the 
capital, unless some hitherto unknown source of 
supply has been discovered. 

Now let us see what would be the result of dis- 
tributing among labor all the profit and interest 
on capital of the entire country. It must be ob- 
served, however, that, if we took it all, capital 
would promptly disappear, and next year, or the 
year after, labor would have to depend on its own 
resources. Besides this, the socialistic programme 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 235 

makes no provision for saving ; the money is all to 
go in furniture, or amusements, and transportation. 
The capitalistic or saving class — or, in other words, 
the class which every year keeps back part of the 
national income for use next year — will vanish 
from the scene. We believe "the State " is, in the 
new regime, to play the part of the capitalist, but 
it could not withhold from labor the means of liv- 
ing with the comfort required by the new creed. 

The total wealth of the United States, according 
to the census of 1890 — that is, the total existing 
product of land, labor, and saving — was $65,037,- 
091,197 ; the population of the country was at the 
same date 62,622,250. Evenly divided, this would 
give $1,039 per caput, or a little more than $5,000 
per family on the commonly accepted basis of five 
persons to a family. If the laborer spent his 
$5,000 at once in making himself comfortable, of 
course, he would, as well as the country at large, 
be worse off than ever. He would, in fact, be 
plunged at once into a very hopeless kind of pov- 
erty. But suppose he invested it; it would not 
yield him over, say, six per cent, at present rates of 
interest. This would make his income $300 a 
year, or about $6 a week. It is evident that 
he could on this make no material change in 
his style of living. Six dollars a week does not go 
far in rent and furniture and dinners and amuse- 



236 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

nients. "We have no statistics showing the annual 
income of the United States, but if we put it down 
as six per cent, on the total accumulated wealth, we 
shall certainly not underestimate it. This interest 
would be $3,902,225,472, which, divided among the 
population, would give $62.31 a head, or $311.55 
per family of five persons — that is, less than a 
dollar a day. 

This does not differ materially from the results 
obtained in Great Britain. Eobert Giffen, the 
English statistician, in one of his most elaborate 
articles a few years ago, estimated the total capital 
of the people of the United Kingdom, or the accu- 
mulated wealth of the nation, at £8,500,000,000 
sterling, the population at that time being almost 
exactly 34,000,000, thus giving each individual 
$1,250 per caput, or about $6,000 per family, 
counting, as before, five to a family. If this were 
invested in England, it would hardly give more 
than four per cent., or $240 a year, which would be a 
pleasant addition to wages, but would leave no mar- 
gin for amusements, travel, books, or " swell " 
clothing. We have no means of getting at the wealth 
of well-to-do people in the United States, there 
being as yet no reliable statistics bearing on that 
subject ; but an analysis of the income-tax returns 
in Great Britain shows that in a year when 456,- 
680 persons were assessed, 118,830 had incomes 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 237 

over £300 a year, the total being £110,565,955. 
On the assumption that these people ought to be 
despoiled and made to share with their less fortu- 
nate brethren, let us see what would happen. 
The population of the kingdom in the year these 
returns were made was 37,176,464. If the income, 
then, of people having more than £300 a year 
were divided among the masses per capita, it 
would give each individual an income of about £3, 
or $15, annually. I always wonder, when reading 
the romances of the ethical economists, whether 
they have ever taken the trouble to look at these 
figures. Apparently they have not. If they had, 
we should assuredly, unless they have gone clean 
daft, hear less talk about what " the State " or the 
municipality can and ought to do for the elevation 
of the poor. The State has no money which it 
does not wring from the hard earnings of sorely 
pressed people. If it took, as we see here, every 
cent they had, it would not be able to make a very 
noticeable change in the laborer's condition, even 
for a single year. What the rich spend on them- 
selves is only a drop in the bucket, and they can 
secure none of their luxuries without sharing with 
the laborer, through investment. 

The notion that there is a reservoir of wealth 
somewhere, either in the possession of the Govern- 
ment or the rich, which might be made to diffuse 



238 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

"plenty through a smiling land," is a delusion 
which nearly all the writings of the ethical econo- 
mists tend to spread, and it is probably the most 
mischievous delusion which has ever taken hold on 
the popular mind. It affects indirectly large num- 
bers of persons, who, if it were presented to them 
boldly and without drapery, would probably repu- 
diate it. But it steals into their brains through 
sermons, speeches, pamphlets, Fabian essays, and 
Bellamy Utopias, and disposes them, on humani- 
tarian grounds, to great public extravagances, in 
buildings, in relief work, in pensions, in schools, 
in high State wages, and philanthropic undertak- 
ings which promise at no distant day to land the 
modem world in bankruptcy. It will be very 
well if the century closes without witnessing this 
catastrophe in France or Italy, or both — the two 
countries in which the democratic theory of the 
inexhaustibility of State funds has been carried 
furthest. It is diffusing through the working 
class of all countries, also, more and more every 
day, not only envy and hatred of the rich, but an 
increasing disinclination to steady industry, and 
an increasing disposition to rely on politics for the 
bettering of their condition. The Unions in Eng- 
land have already announced openly that it is no 
longer to strikes, but to Parliament, they must look 
for elevation, and, of course, all that Parliament 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 239 

can do for them is either to give them more 
money for less labor, or to spend other people's 
money on them in increasing their comforts. 

This indifference to cost, or unwillingness to say 
where the money is to come from to make all the 
world happy and comfortable, is not confined, by 
any means, to our American and English Socialists. 
It is an equally marked characteristic of those of 
the Continent. Says the Paris Temps, speaking 
of that latest scheme of pensioning all old people : 

"What are the usual tactics of Eadicals and Socialists? 
They call with loud cries for reforms of all sorts, and vote 
the principle of them, but always refuse to discuss their 
financial consequences. More than this, they are among 
the first to vote remissions of taxes. On one side they swell 
the expenses ; on the other they diminish the resources." 

At Koubaix, the other day, the mayor proposed 
the following resolution : " All invalid laborers and 
all children should be supported by the Commune 
and the State." Somebody then asked him where 
the Commune and the State were to get the money. 
His answer was : " The money will be taken wher- 
ever it can be found." As Director Ely says, it 
was to be done from a " broad social stand-point," 
and " the general social effect " only — not cost — 
was to be considered. 

Next in importance to the delusion that there is 



240 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

somewhere a great reservoir of wealth, which can 
still be drawn on for the general good, is the delu- 
sion that there is somewhere a reservoir of wisdom 
still untapped which can be drawn on for the 
execution of a new law of distribution. Not only 
is this current, but some of the philosophers have 
got into their heads that if our politicians had more 
money to spend, and more places to bestow, they 
would become purer and nobler and more public- 
spirited. This theory is so much opposed to the 
experience of the human race, that we are hardly 
more called on to argue against it than against the 
assertion that there will be no winter next year. 
We must take it for granted that what is meant is 
that there is somewhere a class of men whose ser- 
vices are now lost to the world, who would come 
into the field for the work of production and dis- 
tribution under the new regime, and display a 
talent and discretion and judgment, which now 
cannot be had either for love or money, for the 
ordinary work of the world. Any salary is, to-day, 
small for a competent railroad, mining, or mill- 
manager ; but we are asked to believe that when the 
State took charge of the great work of clothing and 
feeding and employing the community, men would 
be found in abundance to see that " ideal justice " 
was done, at about $3,000 a year. "Well, there is no 
sign of such men at present. Nobody knows of 



WHO WILL FAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 241 

their existence. The probabilities of biology, 
physiology, psychology, and sociology are all 
against their existence. The opportunities for 
display of their talents even now are immense, 
and yet they do not appear. Nobody says he has 
ever seen them. Nobody pretends that they could 
be found, except the ethical economists, and they 
never mention their names or habitat. In fact, 
as in Bellamy's case, the writers of the social 
romances are compelled to make them unneces- 
sary by predicting a change in human nature which 
will make us all wise, just, industrious, and self- 
denying. 

I think, on the whole, it would not be an 
exaggeration to say that such a social evolution 
as the ethical economists have planned could not 
be accomplished, even for a single year, without 
doubling the wealth of every country which tried 
it, while making no increase in the population. 
And this arrest of the growth of the population is 
just as necessary as the increase of wealth. For it 
is the exertions of mankind in keeping up and in- 
creasing their numbers which have prevented the 
poor from profiting more by the recent improve- 
ments in production. Statistics show readily that, 
thus far, subsistence increases more rapidly than 
population, and this does much to cheer up the 

optimists a n d the revilers of Malthus. But to 
16 



242 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

make a man of any use to civilization, he must in 
some manner be able to pay for his board. If 
wheat costs only ten cents a bushel, the man who 
has not and cannot get the ten cents is clearly a 
bit of surplus population. He has to depend on 
some one else for his support, and is thus a bur- 
den to the community. Employing him at the 
public expense does not change the situation, for 
his neighbors are the public. If they really 
wanted the work done, he would have something 
to exchange. If they do it in order to keep him 
from starving, the demand for his labor is not 
legitimate, and is only a thin disguise for charity. 
Population and subsistence are equally balanced, 
in an economical sense, only when there is a full 
demand for all the labor that offers itself, a state of 
things which is never seen now in any of the great 
towns of the world. Let a strike but take place 
in any branch of unskilled or only slightly skilled 
labor, and the swarm of applicants for the vacant 
places, who instantly appear, shows that there is in 
that spot an excess of people. That is to say, statis- 
tics may prove that food has far outrun the popula- 
tion of the United States at large, and yet there will 
be in New York and Boston and Philadelphia thou- 
sands who find it very difficult to purchase it at 
any price. The Socialists have no plan of dealing 
with this, except making the successful support 



WHO WILL PAT THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 243 

the unsuccessful, the industrious the idle, on the 
same scale of comfort as their own. 

I have also learned from my reading that a new 
" law of distribution " is under consideration in the 
colleges and ethical schools of the world, and that 
there is a fair prospect that one which will satisfy 
all existing needs will be evolved. Now, there are 
only three laws of distribution of which I can form 
any conception. One would be a natural law, like 
the law of gravitation, which automatically divided 
among all concerned, as soon as completed, the 
results of any given piece of production, without 
any care on the part of anybody, and of which no- 
body could complain any more than of the earth's 
attraction. Another would be a law formed by 
some authority, which everybody would acknowl- 
edge as final, and to which all would submit, 
either owing to the overwhelming force at its com- 
mand, or to the universal confidence in its justice. 
The third would be the present law, which I may 
call the law of general agreement, under which 
everybody gets the least for which he will labor, 
and the least for which he will save and invest. 
If there be any other than these, I am unable 
to think it. 

The first of these, I presume, does not need dis- 
cussion. There never will be any natural distribu- 
tive force to which we shall all have to submit as 



244 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

we submit to the law of chemical affinity or pro- 
portion. The division of the products of labor 
and capital will always be the subject of some sort 
of human arrangement, in which the human will 
will play a more or less prominent part. So that 
the second of these laws would have to be the 
result of some kind of understanding as to who or 
what the deciding authority should be, to which all 
would have to submit without murmuring. Thus far 
in the history of mankind it has never been possi- 
ble to come to such an agreement even on matters 
touching the feelings much less nearly than one's 
share of the products of one's labor. No govern- 
ment, spiritual or temporal, has ever existed, which 
had not to keep in subjection a hostile minority 
by the use of force in some shape. The Pope in 
the Middle Ages came nearer seeming the voice of 
pure justice than any other power that has ever 
appeared in the Western world. But Christendom 
was never unanimously willing to let him arrange 
even its political concerns, and I do not think it 
ever entered into the head of the most enthusiastic 
papist to let him arrange his domestic affairs — so 
far as to say what his wages or his profits should 
be. The guilds came near doing this in various 
trades, but their authority was maintained by the 
power of expulsion. When the whole of civil 
society becomes a guild, this power cannot be ex- 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 245 

ercised, because there will be no place for the 
expelled man to go. To make him submit, there 
would have to be some sort of compulsion put 
upon him. In other words, he would have to be 
enslaved by being compelled to labor against his 
will for a reward which he deemed inadequate. 
Except on the assumption, which the smallest 
knowledge of human nature makes ridiculous, that 
everybody is sure to be satisfied with what he 
gets for his work, any law of distribution emanat- 
ing from a human authority would necessarily re- 
sult in slavery. In truth it is impossible to con- 
ceive any plan of State socialism which would uot 
involve the slavery of some portion of the popula- 
tion, unless we can picture to ourselves unanimity 
concerning the things on which men under all pre- 
vious regimes have been most apt to differ. 

It is hardly necessary to discuss the chances of a 
" State " composed of men of such acknowledged 
wisdom and goodness that nobody would dispute 
their ordering of his domestic concerns. But, im- 
probable as this is, it is by no means so improba- 
ble as a State composed of men competent to meet 
the Socialists' demands in their business capacity. 
The ethical economists never go into details on 
this subject. They assume, as does Schmoller, 
that the State — that is, the small body of men 
charged with the enormous responsibilities of a 



246 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

socialist or semi-socialist community, both with its 
production and distribution, and the care of its 
health and morals — would in some manner be a 
sort of concentration of the virtue and morals of 
the whole community ; that it would, in addition, 
have an amount of administrative power, for which 
railroads, mines, and mills now vainly offer almost 
any salary, and for which nations would give 
every conceivable earthly honor and reward — 
fame, power, money, and enthusiastic homage — 
could they get them for the management of their 
finances or the command of their armies. As this 
assumption is so gross and bold that there is 
curiously little discussion about it, and as its 
basis is never explained, it may be dismissed as 
chimsera. 

Mr. Xidd makes mention, among Socialists' ex- 
pectations, the expectation that some day the 
laborer will have the same "social position" as 
the more well-to-do classes, that is, what the 
French call the bourgoisie — the men who wear 
black coats and do no manual labor. " Social 
position " is an extremely vague phrase, and yet I 
think there is probably more hope for the working 
classes in this direction than in any other. The 
Socialists mean, I presume, by sameness of social 
position, association for purposes of social enjoy- 
ment on a footing of equality and with reciprocity 



WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM? 247 

of pleasure. But the difficulties in the way of this 
consummation, though on the surface trifling, and, 
like the thing itself, hard to define, are nevertheless 
likely to prove very troublesome. The old feudal 
feeling which made the man who employed labor 
look down on the laborer as an inferior or semi- 
menial person, has hardly reached this country, or, 
if it ever did reach it, has died out. Society is 
consequently divided by what we may call natural 
lines— that is, by differences of taste, of personal 
habits, of mental culture, and social experience. 
People of the same " social position " are, as a rule, 
people who live in much the same way — that is, 
with about the same expenditure in clothes, furni- 
ture, and cookery, and are drawn together by some 
sort of community either of ideas or of interests. 

But any change which goes on in the way of 
development or " evolution," in this arrangement, 
is in the direction of bringing people together 
socially who do not live in exactly the same way, 
do not belong to the same caste or circle or class. 
In those countries in which the democratic move- 
ment has made most advances and made most im- 
pression on the manners — France, Italy, and the 
United States, for instance — differences of fortune 
are less and less potent in preventing social inter- 
course. But in no country has the workingman 
made his way as yet into anything that can be 



248 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

called "society," that is, into any circle which 
gives " social position." Nor could he be intro- 
duced into it by any sort of legislation or any 
species of compulsion. " Social position " is some- 
thing beyond the reach of armies or fleets or par- 
liaments. It must be won in some manner. It 
cannot be accorded or decreed. The difference 
between a lady's drawing-room full of guests, and 
a wigwam packed with squaws and warriors, tells 
better than even science, or art, or laws, or govern- 
ment, the distance the community has travelled in 
its upward course. 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN 1896 

The country is suffering to-day from two se- 
quels of the civil war. One is the currency ques- 
tion, and the other the tariff question. Of neither 
of them, as national questions of momentous in- 
terest, had anybody the smallest idea before the 
war. What the political prophets thought would 
follow it, were great disorder in the South and 
great difficulty in persuading the army to go back 
to civil life and peaceful industry, and, possibly, in 
persuading the people to pay the national debt. 
None of these perplexities has come upon us. The 
troubles which have come upon us are a strong de- 
sire to debase the currency and to levy heavy taxa- 
tion for protective purposes. These two problems 
to-day constitute almost the sum total of our poli- 
tics, and they present themselves in an extremely 
unmanageable form. 

The plan of making money go farther, by debasing 
or depreciating it, is a very old one. It is not quite 
as old as metallic money, but it is as old as legal 
tender. There was no use in debasing the medium 



250 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

of exchange so long as nobody was obliged to take 
it in return for his goods, or in payment of what 
was due to him. But so soon as the issue of money 
became a governmental function, the practice of 
adulteration, or clipping, or in some manner alter- 
ing it, so as to retain its purchasing or liquidating 
power, while lowering its real value, became very 
general. The Greeks resorted to it ; so did the 
Romans. So have nearly all modern nations. 
But until our time it has always been a device 
for the easy payment of public debts. It was 
the favorite resort of embarrassed governments 
before the days of public loans. It was the gov- 
ernment that was to get the benefit of it, not pri- 
vate individuals. That it was a fraudulent device, 
and that it was a thing, if possible, to be concealed, 
nobody ever denied. History may be searched in 
vain for any assertion of its morality. To see that 
it must always have been looked upon as dishonest, 
one has only to ask one's self why men invented 
money, and why it has continued in use. They in- 
vented it, and have clung to it, simply as a measure 
of value ; that is, a small portable memorandum 
of the worth of something they have parted with, 
which shall procure them, on presentation, some- 
thing as valuable as that thing. This is the 
explanation of the practice of hoarding, or hid- 
ing gold and silver coins, which has prevailed 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 251 

in all ages. People have buried them in the 
ground, or concealed them in holes and corners, in 
the belief and expectation that no matter how long 
they might be kept out of sight and out of use, 
their purchasing power would remain unchanged. 
Sovereigns traded on this popular belief in the 
steadiness of their value, by lowering this value 
secretly. But, as I have said, it was only sover- 
eigns who resorted to this mode of raising the 
wind, and it was so easy that down to the seven- 
teenth century nearly all sovereigns resorted to it. 
They were the official keepers of the national meas- 
ure, and they privately shortened it for their own 
benefit. They enlarged the power of regulating the 
currency into the power of " scaling " their own 
debts. 

During our civil war we followed their example. 
We issued debased currency — that is, dollars that 
were of inferior value to real dollars — and, in our 
distress, not only paid the public debts with them, 
but authorized all debtors to do the same thing to 
their creditors. We excused this on the same 
ground on which we excused our killing people or 
destroying property at the South, namely, that it 
was necessary to save the life of the nation. Con- 
gress had the right of every government to pre- 
serve its own existence by any means necessary for 
the purpose. The country accepted this view of 



252 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the matter. Our Government, we said, has issued 
debased money as a matter of necessity. There 
has been no concealment about it, and it will all 
be made right in the end. Its dollars are bad dol- 
lars. The reason it issued them was the same as 
that for which it has destroyed thousands of lives 
and vast amounts of property. 

When the war was over, however, a very curious 
thing happened. Some people came forward and 
said : " We see these dollars of yours are really 
not money, in the strict sense of the term, but 
promises to pay money. You say you issued them 
during the war on the plea of necessity. The war 
has now been over for some years, and the neces- 
sity has disappeared. Is it not time that you paid 
them, or at all events cease to compel people to 
take them in payment of their debts ? " The answer 
to these questions came from the Supreme Court in 
what were known as the Legal Tender Cases. 1 The 
court said that the power to regulate the currency, 
which every government must have, was really a 
power to make any kind of money it pleased ; that 
it had power not only to stamp and weigh the metal 
or metals which mankind has in all ages agreed to 
regard as the only true money, the only safe measure 
of value, but to make money out of any metal or 

1 The effect of these decisions will be found summed up in 
Chap. lvii. of Hare's " American Constitutional Lav." 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 253 

other material, to issue it instead of the money ac- 
tually current, to raise or lower its value in the 
market, and to give it any name it thought proper — 
to call, for instance, a piece of paper ten inches 
by four " One dollar," or to declare a piece of cop- 
per or platinum to be of the same value as a circu- 
lar piece of gold weighing 25 T f ¥ grains, and usa- 
ble for the same purposes ; — that therefore its 
paper promises to pay money were, to all intents 
and purposes, money. All the discussion which 
has raged among lawyers over this decision has 
turned upon the constitutionality of it, not on the 
justice or honesty of it. The court judged of the 
power of Congress in this matter of currency by 
analogy. It said that Congress must have the 
power over the currency as an " incident of sov- 
ereignty," which all the old governments have had, 
and the definition of sovereignty was obtained by 
observing the practice of sovereigns. Turning to 
history, it found that all the older governments 
had depreciated the currency for their own benefit, 
but I do not believe it found one champion of the 
right to do it, or that any one of these governments 
ever publicly claimed such a right for itself. So 
that we have clothed our Government with a power 
which no other government has ever possessed in 
the forum of morals. The right to punish people 
for their religious opinions might in fact be recog- 



254 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

nized, with more force, as an " incident of sov- 
ereignty " on the same grounds. " Cujus regio ejus 
religio " was an accepted maxim of European pub- 
lic law for a thousand years. 

Out of this decision has grown our currency 
question, as we see it to-day. So soon as the 
people of the United States heard from the mouths 
of their judges that their Government had the 
power not only to regulate money, — that is, to 
weigh, stamp, and give it a name, — but to choose 
the material for it, and fix its value, a large party 
sprang up, commanding a majority in Congress, 
and demanded that the Government should go to 
work to make money out of paper, and pay its 
debts with it. This party was beaten, after a hard 
struggle, by the aid of various arguments, of which 
the foremost was that, paper having no intrinsic 
value, Congress might increase it to any extent it 
pleased, and it would thus soon become worthless, 
— witness the Continental paper, the French as- 
signats, and the Confederate money. The green- 
backers then abandoned the field, or were in the 
fair way of abandoning it, when silver began to 
fall heavily. It at once seemed to them that here 
was something cheap, comparatively easy to get 
hold of, and therefore peculiarly suited to the 
needs of the poor, which was already in use as 
currency in many countries, and would be nearly 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 255 

as good as greenbacks as a means of restoring 
prosperity. It could not be said of it, as had been 
said of the greenback, that it had no intrinsic 
value. It had value, apart from its use as money. 
It was a metal. Moreover, Congress could not 
increase the quantity of it at pleasure, as it could 
increase the quantity of greenbacks. Its amount 
was fixed by nature. 

Then there grew up about silver a remarkable 
amount of legendary matter. The ancient idea 
that money was a measure of value seemed to fade 
away. To the demand of those who insisted that 
gold should be retained in circulation, and that 
silver should, as money, bear some fixed ratio to 
it, the answer was made that we could, by legisla- 
tion, make the ratio anything we pleased, — 15 to 1, 
or 16 to 1, or 20 to 1. Some preferred 15 to 1 be- 
cause this was the ratio fixed by the Almighty 
when placing the two metals in the ground. 
Others did not think any ratio was necessary 
because gold ought not to be retained in circula- 
tion in a country of poor or plain people. Silver 
ought to do all the work of money. If it was too 
heavy, as some said, for daily use, let it be stored 
and have paper issued against it. Paper money, 
by the by, could be issued "against" anything. 
It did not need to be exchangeable for a thing- 
provided it were " based " on it, that is, if the 



256 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

issuer of the paper owned something of value 
which he had in his mind when he issued it. 
Therefore, silver did not need to be mined or 
coined in order to " base " paper on it. We need 
only, one member of Congress said, have our 
engineers calculate how much silver there was in a 
mountain, and we could then " base " paper on it 
to that amount. Silver, too, was gradually per- 
sonified into something almost human. It was 
entitled to " a place of honor." It was the friend 
of the poor, and stayed with people in times of 
misfortune when gold fled to the rich, or to foreign 
countries. You could be ungrateful, or indiffer- 
ent, to silver as to a human friend. Yery recently, 
a member of Congress reproached a newspaper in 
this city with " never having said a kind word of 
silver." Silver came to have a " cause " of its own, 
to be degraded or betrayed. It had triumphs to 
achieve and defeats to sustain. You could insult 
silver, or slight it, or slander it, or humiliate it, or 
snub it. I do not believe that it would be easy to 
find, in the discussions of the past ten years, the 
smallest recognition, on the silver side, that money 
is, or ought to be, a measure of value simply. It 
has been treated throughout as a commodity which 
it was the duty of the Government to make as 
plentiful as possible, and put within easy reach of 
as large a number of people as possible. On this 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 257 

view of the duty of the Government, what we call 
the silver party, which is now in the field, has 
been founded. 

Now, the founding, in a country of universal suf- 
frage, of a party which looks on money not as a 
measure of value but as a commodity, is a new 
thing and a serious one. The aberrations of the 
human mind on the subject of currency have, as I 
have already said, been many since the dawn of 
history, but I do not recall any aberration in which 
the pretence, at least, of regarding money as a 
standard by which to regulate the exchange of 
commodities, was not kept up. This pretence 
often covered fraudulent alterations of the stand- 
ard, but it was never laid aside, and the altera- 
tions were concealed. The adulterators and 
debasers never said, "Never mind about the pur- 
chasing power of this ; the more there is of it the 
better for you." They always said, " This is just 
the same as what you have got already, and will 
purchase you just the same amount of anything 
you desire." Moreover, like most other functions 
of government in times past, the regulation of the 
currency was always left in the hands of a few ex- 
perts, that is, of men who made the currency a 
matter of scientific observation, and who sought, 
according to their lights, to make money a measure, 
as well as a medium, of exchange. For the cur- 
17 



258 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

rency question is not altogether, as many suppose, 
a question of material or of quantity. It is, essen- 
tially or mainly, a question of psychology. "What 
they study, who study it aright, is the way the hu- 
man mind plays around exchange. The merits or 
demerits of gold or silver or paper as money are to 
be found not in the things themselves, but in the 
way in which the people who use them look at 
them. Take Gresham's Law for instance. It says 
that, when there are two kinds of currency, — one 
inferior in value to the other, but both legal ten- 
der, — the more valuable one will leave the country. 
Well the more valuable one does not walk off of 
its own accord ; it is sent away by men who see 
profit in exporting it. The objection to silver — 
the great overwhelming one — is that the men who 
make most use of coin prefer gold. And what all 
statesmen or economists who make a specialty of 
currency try to get at, through tables of prices, and 
movements of bullion, is how people feel about the 
different kind of medium in which they make their 
purchases and pay their debts. 

The transfer to the newspaper, the caucus, the 
convention, and the popular vote, of this extremely 
delicate task of deciding what kind of money in 
any given country makes the best measure of 
value, while furnishing the most convenient medium 
of exchange, is, as I have said, something new. 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 259 

The problem before the country now is almost as 
much how to take the measure of value out of poli- 
tics, as how to get at the right measure just now. 
For there will be little use in establishing the gold 
standard or any other standard, unless politicians 
can be induced to let it alone, and leave it in the 
hands of men who will change it only to secure 
greater steadiness, and not to help debtors or to 
stimulate a particular branch of industry. Until it 
is well established that the currency will not come 
up as a question to be settled by the popular vote 
at every Presidential election, there cannot be any 
industrial or commercial peace or tranquillity. The 
questions of ratio or no ratio, of one metal or an- 
other, of government paper or bank paper, of elas- 
ticity or fixity, — have all to be considered with ref- 
erence to the effect on the standard of value, and 
this class of problem is no more capable of being 
settled at the polls than are parallels of latitude or 
of longitude. The debating of it on the stump, ex- 
cept to prevent the commission of some great folly, 
or to procure their transfer to experts, is a patent 
absurdity. The one thing which the popular vote 
can safely do for the currency, is to direct its com- 
mittal to a few men who are familiar with it, both 
from the theoretical and the practical side. This, 
too, is the main object of the championship of the 
gold standard which we now witness. What the 



260 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

" gold bugs " really demand is not the gold stand- 
ard, so much as assimilation in currency matters to 
the other great commercial nations, and the absolute 
abandonment of the currency question as a politi- 
cal issue. That we shall secure these things at 
one election is not likely, but the election of a 
President on a sound-money platform will be the 
first step toward it, and a great one. 

The currency problem is made all the more com- 
plicated by the attitude of the West toward the 
East. That there is a line dividing the two regions 
has been for a long time vaguely perceived, but it 
was never so clearly defined as by the war feeling 
and by the silver question. Speaking generally, the 
bulk of whatever there was of pugnacity toward 
England after Mr. Cleveland's message was to be 
found west of the Alleghanies ; and, speaking gen- 
erally, also, it may be said that the principal sup- 
port of the silver standard is to be found west of 
the Alleghanies. It is accompanied in both cases 
by a dislike or distrust of the East, which is partly 
social and partly financial, and covers also Euro- 
pean countries, but principally England. The social 
dislike or distrust would need an article to itself. 
The financial one is, in the main, that of a borrowing 
for a creditor community, and that of a new agricul- 
tural community for one which is devoted mainly 
to the business of selling commodities and exchang- 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 261 

ing money. It is composed, in part, of the old dis- 
like of the farmer for the financier, and in part, 
that of the poor debtor for the rich creditor. Be- 
hind it all lies great ignorance about foreigners and 
foreign relations, and of the other forms of society 
than those by which western men are surrounded, 
combined with an immense sense of power. It is 
difficult to make a western man understand that a 
country of 70,000,000 of inhabitants cannot do 
anything that it has a fancy to do, including the 
circulation of silver at a fixed ratio. It is also 
difficult to persuade him that a well-dressed man 
with superfine manners, does not cherish evil de- 
signs of some sort. He does not see how the great 
fortunes he hears of in the East have been honestly 
acquired, and he, therefore, would hear with equa- 
nimity of the bombardment of eastern cities. 
He brooks very ill the unconscious assumption of 
superiority which the long cultivation of the social 
art brings with it in older countries, and thinks it 
the main business of the American abroad to re- 
sent this by threats and defiance. 

Among the mass of western people, a knowledge 
of the conditions of foreign exchange is scanty. 
The notion that a nation with $1,600,000,000 of 
foreign commerce can be a law unto itself in com- 
mercial matters, and that it is easy to create finan- 
cial conditions which will cut us off from the rest 



262 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

of the world, is still rife in that part of the 
country. In fact, it would not be too much to say 
that, in spite of a high degree of culture at certain 
points, the West is suffering all the observed con- 
sequences of too great isolation, — that is, want of 
more contact with other social conditions and other 
forms of civilization. All genuine and steady prog- 
ress thus far has come from intercourse with for- 
eigners and familiarity with their point of view, 
and readiness to adopt whatever is best and most 
suitable in their ideas, manners, or customs. This 
has been true from the earliest times, is, in fact, 
the most familiar phenomenon of advancing civil- 
ization. The greatest danger the Valley of the 
Mississippi runs to-day, is the danger of living in 
its own ideas, — the belief that Providence still 
creates peculiar peoples. 

Escape from the silver idea is not likely to be 
easy. The protective idea is incorporated with it. 
The belief that silver is a commodity, not simply a 
measure of value, has taken possession of the west- 
ern mind. The notion that it is, therefore, as 
much entitled to protection as any other com- 
modity, by any means within reach of the Govern- 
ment, is not easily dislodged, so long as the pro- 
tective theory prevails at the East. It is not easy 
for an eastern protectionist to face the arguments 
by which a western man refuses to help the East 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 263 

to support its industries by heavy duties so long 
as the West, and more especially the mining 
States, have no share in the blessings derived from 
the national policy. The western man is a pro- 
tectionist, too, but he wishes to push the plan 
farther, and he has concocted a theory of currency 
to go along with it. A self-supporting Europe- 
defying country, producing everything it wants for 
its own use, including its own money, is his idea 
of a state. The eastern man goes only half way. 
He wishes to be independent of Europe indus- 
trially, but to keep up Jris connection with it pecu- 
niarily, which is not thorough and complete "Am- 
ericanism." 

That these ideas will be overcome, except by act- 
ual experiment, seems unlikely. If the currency 
should, by the next election, fall into the hands of a 
Government dominated by the ideas of the silver- 
ites, we must be prepared for deliverance through 
a panic of very great magnitude. This is the way, 
as a general rule, the financial heresies of a dem- 
ocracy are dissipated. Books are not read, or 
theorists much listened to. The thing has to be 
tried. Nevertheless discussion has produced a 
great deal of effect in the great cities where com- 
mercial considerations tell, and the chances are 
that, if the sound-money men shall get hold of the 
Government in 1897, the cult of silver will gradn- 



264 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ally retreat, like paganism in the early ages, to re- 
mote country districts, and linger rather as a 
superstition than as a financial theory. Several 
things are working against it, and the most power- 
ful is the great increase in the production of gold ; 
but its greatest support, that which will probably 
last longest, is patriotic belief in the power of the 
nation to do what it pleases. 

Much the same things are true, mutatis mu- 
tandis, of the tariff question. I am quite aware 
that there is a great deal to be said for a tariff that 
shall fairly protect native industries from foreign 
competition. The theory of protection has been 
defended by many able men, and is held by many 
honest ones. But the protective tariff, as enacted 
by legislation either in this or in any other demo- 
cratic country, is never the protective tariff which 
publicists or economists work out in their libraries. 
The latter takes a general view of the whole field 
of industry, and endeavors to impose duties with 
such impartiality that no one industry shall profit 
at the expense of another, or interfere with an- 
other's freedom of action. Moreover it insists 
above all things on permanence, or, at all events, 
on sufficient permanence to enable the legislator 
to see the result of his own experiments, as regards 
the amount and the incidence of his duties. This 
is the sort of tariff which protectionists write 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 265 

books about, and lecture about land laud on the 
stump. 

The actual tariff of legislation is a totally differ- 
ent affair. It is made up not so much on a 
general view of the needs of all industries, as on 
the account each industry gives of the amount of 
duty it needs to make it profitable. It favors, too, 
those which are able to make the largest contri- 
butions to electioneering expenses of the party 
which enacts it, without regard to the general 
effect. Permanence is the last thing it thinks 
of. Our tariff has undergone twenty-five changes 
since the war, all in the direction of higher duties. 
All but one of these changes were made on the 
demand of manufacturers, who claimed more as- 
sistance, and got it without any inquiry into the 
reason why they needed it, or why they had failed 
to make sufficient profits under the existing duties. 
So that the tariff of the scientific protectionists is 
never seen and probably never will be seen in 
practice, nor is it at all likely that any tariff can 
ever have much stability — and this for reasons 
which apply to all, or nearly all, governmental in- 
terferences with trade and industry. 

No such interference can in modern society ever 
be isolated or confined to one object or class 
of objects. Its effects are always vastly more far- 
reaching than the promoter ever imagines. One 



266 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

of the most marked of these is to stimulate com- 
petition at home by bringing more capital into 
every protected industry — thus diminishing the 
advantages of protection to each beneficiary, while 
tempting people to start new industries without a 
special fitness for them, in reliance on protection. 
So that, like all stimulants, its influence dimin- 
ishes as time goes on, and the cry for more du- 
ties or new duties is constant. There have been, 
as I have said, twenty-five changes in the tariff 
since 1861, and only one of them has been due 
to the so-called free-traders. All the others were 
made on the demand of dissatisfied protectionists. 
And yet, as any business man will tell you, nothing 
is more necessary to prosperous industry than 
stability in the conditions under which it is carried 
on. That is, business can flourish under either a 
high or low tariff, if the business man can make 
his calculations with certainty. But of any steady 
tariff there is no more promise, apparently, to-day 
than there was ten years ago. If the Kepubli- 
cans elect the President and have a majority in 
both Houses, they will probably pass something 
like the old McKinley tariff bill, and they gen- 
erally suppose that this will bring in an era of 
prosperity; but it will not do so any more than 
the old McKinley tariff which led to the terrible 
defeat of 1890. It will be full of excesses and 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 267 

abuses which will bring about another reaction, 
and there will then be in a few years another kind 
of tariff with a similar result. Prosperity will 
wait for a settlement of the currency question. 

Another objection to the protective system, per- 
haps in the long run the most serious of all, is its 
effect on public life. No contemporary observer 
can fail to be struck with the disappearance from 
Congress and the State Legislatures of men 
prominent for eloquence, character, or the weight 
of their opinions. It is no exaggeration to say 
that there is hardly one left in the political world 
who is listened to for doctrine or instruction on 
any great public question. There are in Congress 
no orators,.no financiers or economists, no scholars 
whom people like to hear from before making 
up their minds — no Clays, no Websters, no Cal- 
houns, no Wrights, no Marcys, no Everetts, no 
Sewards, no Lincolns, no Fessendens, no Trum- 
bulls, no Sumners, no "illustrations," as the 
French call them, in any field. The talent of the 
country in fact seems to have taken refuge in 
the great business corporations, and in the colleges, 
just as in the Middle Ages it took refuge in the 
monasteries. In the late attempts of Congress to 
get up a war there seemed to be no one in either 
House capable of drafting a resolution which 
would present its designs in respectable shape. 



268 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

We cannot recall any case in modern times in 
which a government seemed so completely aban- 
doned by the adepts and experts. 

Now why is this to be ascribed to the tariff? 
Well, in this way : Business — the making of money 
by the production or sale of commodities — is the 
greatest interest of lif e to the bulk of the American 
community. As soon as government is presented 
to men as an instrument for the addition to their 
income of a sum in dollars and cents which they 
can enter in their ledgers every year, as they can 
profits from a speculation, they cease to think of it 
as an instrument for the promotion of the general 
welfare. Their mind gets fixed on it wholly as a 
means of increasing their own revenues. When a 
man has once entered in his accounts a good sum 
as the result of a piece of legislation procured by 
his own exertions, he is never again the same man 
as a citizen. He takes an entirely different view 
of the State, of the objects of government, of the 
nature of patriotism, and of the functions of the 
legislator. Politics becomes business to him. 
The duty of getting high-tariff men into Congress 
who will put the right duty on his commodity 
becomes a duty which he owes to his partners, 
to his creditors, to his family. The expediency 
of paying any sum necessary to elect such men 
becomes as plain as the expediency of paying 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 269 

the expenses of his drummers. Opponents of 
his tariff become to him assailants of property 
and order. A speech against the tariff is an 
instigation to communists to wreck his mill or 
his workshop. Free-trade books become quasi- 
incendiary publications. Free - trade professors 
and editors are corrupters of youth. All the 
mental influences which create orthodoxy on any 
subject, work for the conversion of defence against 
foreign industrial competition into the highest 
duty of a citizen. 

Once fill the country with this idea, as with a 
religion, and the effect on politics soon becomes 
manifest. Men who believe in freedom of thought 
and expression, and who think that government 
has other and higher duties than seeing that the 
business of the private citizen is profitable, are 
generally the fittest men for public life. Such 
men are rarely good tariff men, and they are, 
therefore, sedulously discarded by caucuses and 
conventions. Bosses are hostile to them because 
money cannot readily be obtained to promote their 
election, and because they are too independent to 
be easily disciplined. When this process has 
lasted a number of years, the thoughts of the elite 
of the nation naturally turn away from politics to 
fields in which a man may speak the thing he 
wills, and be the master of his own career. 



270 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

With more space at my disposal illustrations of 
this would be easy. There is one before us to-day, 
however, which cannot be passed over. That this 
tendency to eliminate men of ability and indepen- 
dence of thought from public life should end in 
making Major McKinley the Republican candidate 
for the Presidency, is what is now called "the 
logic of the situation." If this sifting process con- 
tinued very long, it was inevitable that it would at 
last discard from the list of qualifications for the 
Chief Magistracy everything but devotion to a high 
tariff, and put in nomination for it a man who had 
nothing else to recommend him. All the Republi- 
can candidates since the foundation of the party — 
Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Blaine, Harrison 
—have had some solid claim for the place, apart 
from the tariff. Lincoln was a considerable orator 
and valiant opponent of slavery when he was 
nominated. Grant was a great soldier. Hayes 
was a good soldier, a sound financier, and a highly 
respectable local administrator. Garfield was a 
scholar, an orator, and a publicist of distinction. 
Harrison was a distinguished soldier, and had con- 
siderable eminence at the bar of his own State. 
Blaine was admired for a good many things which 
had no connection with protection for native in- 
dustry. But, as the tariff becomes more prominent 
in the party councils, the standard of talent or 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 271 

achievement necessary for the place steadily de- 
clines. There was a strong note of warning on 
this subject in General Harrison's remark that a 
" cheap coat made a cheap man," and in the pre- 
posterous doctrine which many of the Eepublican 
leaders began in 1890 to preach on the stump, 
that dearness of commodities was a good thing 
for the poor. The intellectual descent made by 
the party at that time cleared the way for a far 
poorer sort of candidate than any it had ever had, 
nay, worse than any party had ever had since the 
foundation of the Government, for we are ready to 
allow any one who has looked into the published 
volume of Major McKinley's speeches, or has 
examined his record as Governor of Ohio, to 
compare him with any President, or Presidential 
candidate, in our history. Any such examination 
will show that the party has, in its search for a 
suitable standard-bearer, reached a region of ex- 
traordinary intellectual poverty and moral weak- 
ness, but still a region toward which it has for 
many years been steadily marching. 

The financial situation is simply this : Partly 
under the influence of the silver craze, partly under 
the influence of a renewal of the greenback craze 
— which makes greenbacks a sacred relic of the war 
to be preserved in spite of their defects as money 
— we have undertaken to keep about $900,000,000 



272 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

of mixed silver and government paper at par with 
gold. This is the most tremendous task any civil- 
ized government has ever imposed upon itself. 
The Bank of England only agrees to keep $80,000,- 
000 of paper at par. The Bank of France has only 
$700,000,000 to look after, at the most, for this is 
all the paper it is allowed to issue, and keeps gold 
for nearly half of this. The German Bank has 
only to keep its paper at par in securities, bank- 
notes, discounted bills, and legal-tender notes of the 
government. But we undertake to see that every- 
body who wants it shall get gold for more than 
$400,000,000 of silver, which brings only 58 per- 
cent, of intrinsic value in the market, and for 
about $500,000,000 of paper which has no intrinsic 
value whatever. In order to do this, we borrow 
gold whenever our stock of it runs short, and 
every successful loan is greeted as a great finan- 
cial triumph. 

Upon this borrowed stock of gold, too, Gresh- 
am's Law plays incessantly. I have recalled the 
meaning of this law in an earlier part of this arti- 
cle. It means for us that any one who finds it nec- 
essary to settle a balance with a foreign creditor, 
and who is unable to settle it with silver or paper, 
may settle it with gold drawn from the Treasury. 
So that the Government stock of gold is sure to 
undergo incessant diminution from these drafts. 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 273 

Now the protectionist, or I may say McKinley, 
remedy for this is to procure larger revenue by put- 
ting higher duties on foreign imports. Granting 
that this would increase the revenue, the only dif- 
ference would be that we could purchase our re- 
serve of gold with our own money, instead of bor- 
rowing it. But it would not diminish the drafts on 
this reserve. These drafts arise out of the fact 
that with a dollar in silver worth only 58 cents, I 
can go to the Treasury and get a dollar worth 100 
cents. This demand will not cease until silver be- 
comes worth 100 cents on the dollar, or the race of 
money-changers dies out, or until the volume of 
our currency is so reduced that we shall need gold 
for other uses than bolstering up our silver and 
greenbacks. If all this be true, it is easy to see 
that the declarations in favor of the gold standard 
in the Republican platforms will profit us little, 
unless some means are devised to stop the drain 
of our gold caused by our periodical announce- 
ments that we mean to keep our silver and paper 
at par with gold, or perish in the attempt. So 
long as this continues, it matters not whether we 
buy the gold for our reserves, or borrow it, we 
shall be constantly on the edge of a silver basis, 
and consequently of a frightful panic. 

The work of currency reform, therefore, consists 
in following the example of the other great nations 



274 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

of the earth and leaving silver to do the best it can 
as token-money or small change — that is, limiting 
its legal tender quality — and in reducing the vol- 
ume of the greenbacks, or wholly redeeming them, 
and discharging the Government from the duty 
of keeping anything at par, except its own credit. 
But this involves the substitution, for the green- 
backs and silver, of some sort of banking system 
whose paper shall be secure and whose circula- 
tion shall contract and expand with the wants of 
trade. No Legislature since 1815 has had a more 
serious task before it than this, and we doubt if 
any Legislature has ever had. It will need a Con- 
gress either of remarkable intelligence or of re- 
markable docility. It will need a first-rate finan- 
cier to direct the operation, one who is intimately 
acquainted with currency problems both as affected 
by home trade and by foreign exchange — such a 
man in truth as Alexander Hamilton or Albert 
Gallatin. 



THE EEAL PKOBLEMS OF DEMOCKACY 

Mr. John Morley, in replying to some of Mr. 
Lecky's charges against the liberal movement of 
the last fifty years in England, expresses his regret 
that in his recent book, " Democracy and Liberty," 
Mr. Lecky has not devoted himself to a discussion 
of democracy in all its aspects ; its effect not only 
on government, but on social relations of every 
description, on science, on art, on literature — on 
the whole of life, in short, as we see it in the 
western world to-day. He says : 

"We can hardly imagine a finer or more en- 
gaging, inspiring, and elevating subject for inquiry 
than this wonderful outcome of that extraordinary 
industrial, intellectual, and moral development 
which has awakened in the masses of modern 
society the consciousness of their own strength, 
and the resolution, still dim and torpid, but certain 
to expand and to intensify, to use that strength for 
purposes of their own. We may rejoice in democ- 
racy or we may dread it. Whether we like it or 
detest it, and whether a writer chooses to look at 



276 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

it as a whole or to investigate some particular 
aspect of it, the examination ought to take us into 
the highest region of political thought, and it un- 
doubtedly calls for the best qualities of philosophic 
statesmanship and vision." 

The task suggested is not easy, and Mr. Lecky, 
perhaps wisely, has not attempted it. He devotes 
himself mainly, in the first volume, at least, to 
describing the objectionable tendencies of de- 
mocracy, more particularly as illustrated by the 
history of the last half century in England and 
America. The second volume may be called a 
series of essays on the topics now most frequently 
discussed in democratic countries ; Mr. Lecky gives 
the pros and cons of each without committing 
himself to very positive opinions on any of them. 
All authors who touch at all on democracy in our 
day recognize in it a new and potent force, des- 
tined before long to effect very serious changes in 
the social structure, and to alter, in many important 
respects, the way in which men have looked at 
human society since the foundation of Christianity. 
But they handle it very much as we handle electric- 
ity ; that is to say, tentatively. They admit they 
are dealing with a very mysterious power, of which 
they know as yet but little, and on the future man- 
ifestations of which they cannot pronounce with 
any confidence. The great difficulty in the way 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 277 

of discussing it philosophically or scientifically is 
the one which doubtless Mr. Lecky himself has 
experienced — that thus far all investigators have 
been themselves part of the thing to be investi- 
gated. Every man, or nearly every man, who 
takes up a pen to examine the questions what 
democracy is, and what effect it is likely to have 
on the race, is himself either an earnest advocate 
or an earnest opponent of it. He sees in it either 
the regeneration of mankind or the ruin of our 
civilization. This is true of nearly every writer of 
eminence who has touched on it since the French 
Eevolution. The most moderate of its^enemies 
seldom admits more on its behalf than his own 
ignorance of what it promises. Its defenders are, 
as a rule, too enthusiastic to make their predic- 
tions of much philosophic value. 

In England, the historic background has enough 
social gloom in it to make the glorification of 
democracy comparatively easy work for the faith- 
ful thus far. In America its success seems so 
closely connected with the success of the gov- 
ernment itself that praise of it and prediction of 
its complete sufficiency, have become the part 
of patriotism. Doubts about its future seem 
doubts about the future of the nation, which no 
lover of his country is willing to entertain lightly. 
Tocqueville is the one man of eminence who in 



£78 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

modern times has attempted for democracy what 
Montesquieu attempted for all government — the 
discovery and exposition of the principle on which 
it rests. His work on " Democracy in America " is 
so well known that it is hardly necessary to say that, 
treating the base of democracy as equality, he has 
sought to foretell what the effect of this principle 
would be, in the end, on manners and institutions. 
Some of his predictions have come true. Some 
are very erroneous, and the fact is that, as the 
years roll by and American development continues, 
his work becomes less valuable. It will always be 
interesting as what the French call an etude, and 
was the first glimpse Europe got of the effect of 
democratic institutions on character and man- 
ners, but it has not maintained its earlier fame. 
Tocqueville fell more and more, before he died, 
into an attitude of partisanship, and his later polit- 
ical essays are too deeply tinged with melancholy 
about the future, for an impartial investigator. 

No one, since his time, has taken the subject up 
with more authority than Sir Henry Maine. In a 
book on Popular Government, published in 1886, 
he ventures on a broad characterization of demo- 
cratic society, which bears the mark of insufficient 
observation. The only thing he has to rely upon 
in the way of experience is the Athenian democ- 
racy and that of America. There was not in the 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 279 

ancient world any democracy at all in the sense in 
which we understand the term, and the working 
of the system in the United States has been too 
short, the disturbing elements have been too nu- 
merous, and Sir Henry's acquaintance with it is 
all too slight, to make it possible for him to speak 
about it with philosophic positiveness. To crown 
all, he was essentially an aristocrat, an authority 
who, rightly or wrongly, felt his position in some 
sort menaced by the new regime. 

Mr. Lecky suffers from the same disadvantages. 
He is a gentleman in the old sense of the term, 
who feels that his weight as such is in some sort 
menaced. In the new regime he expects men of 
his sort to count for less in some way, probably in 
many w 7 ays. He is fresh, too, from a revolution in 
his own country, much more searching and deep- 
seated than revolutions used to be — one of the 
first democratic revolutions, in short, that we have 
had since that of France, one hundred years ago. 
The recent Irish land laws are the dethronement 
of a great class, the apparent sacrifice of the few r 
to the many, on a large scale ; this is what democ- 
racy calls for, but it is never accomplished without 
seemingly serious violations of natural justice. 
Mr. Lecky took a prominent part in opposing 
these recent changes in Ireland. Whether they 
are bad or good, no man could share either in 



280 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

defending or in advocating them without consider- 
able damage to his judicial-mindedness, to his 
philosophic insight, so to speak. He cannot ap- 
proach them as a Cavour or a Beaumont. He is 
part of the revolution. He cannot wholly like 
them, and he cannot help ascribing them in some 
way to the great movement which, for better or 
worse, is plainly upturning the world, putting 
down the mighty and exalting the humble. If, 
therefore, one were disposed to be ill-natured, one 
might call Mr. Lecky's book an attempt to pay 
democracy of? for suggesting or assisting the Irish 
land laws and home-rule movement. It is essen- 
tially an address to the opponents of democra- 
cy, written with his usual narrating ability and 
fulness of reading; but, for the reasons I have 
stated, it cannot do much to convince those who 
are not fellow-sufferers and do not share his prej- 
udices. In short, it is not the book on democra- 
cy of which the world is just now in need and 
in search. 

The chief objection to it, and to most recent 
writings of the same sort, is that, while nominally 
discussing democracy, it really only points out the 
apparently bad tendencies of democracy. It does 
not treat democracy as a whole. It errs in this 
respect somewhat as Burke's Keflections on the 
French Revolution do. One could not get from 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 281 

Burke any idea of the objections to the ancien 
regime. The Ee volution seems, according to him, 
the work of mocking devils who could give no 
reason for their mischief. That anybody in France 
had anything serious to complain of, anything 
which could not be removed by means of a little 
patience and good will, anything which was likely 
to have an educating influence, which was likely to 
mould character and breed defects, does not appear. 
The whole outbreak seems gratuitous, uncaused, 
and therefore against the order of nature. Mr. 
Lecky singles out and makes prominent nearly 
everything that can be said against democracy, by 
means of partial comparison — the least fair of all 
methods of judging either a society or a regime, 
and yet it is the commonest method of travellers 
and essayists. For my part, I never read a de- 
scription of the evils of democracy at the present 
day without inquiring with what state of society or 
with what kind of government the writer compares 
it. When and where was the polity from observa- 
tion of which he has formed his standard? When 
and where was the state of things, the "good 
estate," from which we have declined or are declin- 
ing ? This is extremely important, for all we know 
or can say about government must be the result of 
actual observation. " Ideal government," as it is 
called, such as is described in Plato's "Kepublie," 



282 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

or Mores " Utopia," or Bellamy's " Looking Back- 
ward," is interesting to read about, as the play of 
an individual mind, but no one considers any of 
these books very helpful to those who are actually 
contending with the problems of to-day. 

To enable any reformer to make his impress on 
the age in which he lives, or to win any considera- 
ble number of his countrymen over to his way of 
thinking, the state of things he seeks to bring 
about must commend itself to his contemporaries 
as capable of realization. He must have some 
model in his mind's eye, not too far removed, either 
in time or in distance, from the popular imagina- 
tion. This is an essential condition of the advance 
of all great multitudes. Every man's standard of 
civilization is drawn from what he has seen, or 
thinks he may readily reach. Nearly all differ- 
ences touching governments, between various peo- 
ples or between various classes of the same society, 
came from differences of standards. Some are ex- 
tremely content with a state of things that others 
think impossible. An Indian, for instance, cannot 
understand the white man's eagerness to get him 
to give up the tepee, in which he has been so 
happy, for the log cabin or the frame house. The 
spoils politician is puzzled by the Mugwump's 
passion for competitive examinations, and govern- 
ment based on party distribution of the offices as 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 283 

spoils seems to liim most natural and thoroughly 
successful. Probably few or no Tammany men 
can to this day quite understand the objection of 
reformers to their style of government. They see 
that tens of thousands apparently like it and are 
satisfied with it. What is the need of a change ? 
The cause of all the discussion is that the Mug- 
wump has a different standard of government from 
the politician, and is not satisfied until the govern- 
ment he lives under comes up to it. In like man- 
ner, when a monarchist or conservative begins to 
complain to a democrat of the defects of his sys- 
tem and of the gloominess of its prospects, in order 
to produce any effect he must point out from what 
period or from what system there has been a fall- 
ing away. When and where were things any bet- 
ter, taken as a whole? And how much better 
were they ? This is a question which every writer 
on democracy is bound to answer at the outset. 

I have said " taken as a whole," because the fatal 
defect of all attacks on democracy of recent years, 
like Mr. Lecky's, is this defect of partial compar- 
ison. When we undertake to compare one regime 
with another, old with new times, it does not do to 
fasten on one feature of either. In our day this 
is sure to be ineffective. If we judge American 
society, for instance, solely from the point of view 
of legislative purity and ability, it will certainly 



284 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

suffer in comparison with that of Great Britain. 
If we judge it from the point of view of judicial 
learning and independence, we shall probably reach 
the same conclusion. It would be quite easy to point 
out certain losses which it sustains from the ab- 
sence of an aristocracy, as contrasted with any 
European country. If, too, we undertake, as Mr. 
Lecky does, to compare the England or Ireland of 
to-day with the England or Ireland of some by- 
gone period, known or unknown, it does not do to 
say that at that period Parliament was better, or 
county government was better, or legislation was 
more deliberate and impartial, or other statesmen 
were better than Mr. Gladstone. To produce any 
real effect the comparison has to be complete. 
You have to compare the general happiness from 
all causes. You have to treat the two contrasted 
communities as places for the poor and friendless 
man, or for the industrious, enterprising, and 
thrifty man, to live in, as well as for the wealthy 
and cultivated man. Otherwise you make no 
headway. Every reader will think instantly of the 
things you have overlooked. You cannot compare 
the England of to-day with the England of 1800 
or 1867 without destroying or greatly weakening 
your case. There is not a poor man in England 
who is not conscious that he is vastly better off, as 
regards all the things furnished him under the 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 285 

name of "government," than his grandfather was. 
The same thing is ludicrously true of Ireland. A 
proposal submitted to the people in either country 
to go back fifty or one hundred years, would be 
rejected almost unanimously with derision. You 
might give them fifty reasons for thinking them 
mistaken, but not one of them would produce any 
impression. Why is this ? An adequate book on 
democracy would answer the question. It would 
not only give these reasons, but state fully and 
fairly why they were certain to be disregarded. 

The truth is that democracy is simply an experi- 
ment in the application of the principle of equality 
to the management of the common affairs of the 
community. It is the principle of equality which 
has conquered the world. That one man is as good 
as another is an outgrowth of what may be called 
social consciousness, and as soon as it has got pos- 
session of the State, democratic government follows 
as a matter of course. The theory of the social 
contract is an offspring of it. This theory made 
no impression on the masses when Locke preached 
it. It did not reach the people till Eousseau took 
it up, in the middle of the last century. Since 
then it has made great strides. Rulers have be- 
come the mere hired servants of the mass of the 
community, and criticism of them has come natu- 
rally with the employment of them as agents. The 



286 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

notion that all men are alike, and are entitled to 
an equal voice in the management of the common 
affairs, is democracy. It is the effort of all to 
assert this, and to see how the thing can be done, 
which forms the democratic experiment that is be- 
ing tried in so many countries. 

Many things have occurred which seem to war- 
rant the belief that it will not succeed. AYhat con- 
stitutes the success of a government ? The very 
first answer to this question is that we cannot tell 
whether a government is successful or not with- 
out seeing how long it lasts. The first duty of a 
government is to last. A government, however 
good, which does not last is a failure. The Athen- 
ian republic, the Roman republic and empire, the 
Venetian republic, the French monarchy, the En- 
glish monarchy, and the American republic, have 
all to be tried by this test. To say that a govern- 
ment is a very good government, but that it was 
overthrown or changed in a few years, is almost a 
contradiction in terms. All we know of any value 
about any government is derived from observation 
of its working. It must be confessed, therefore, that 
nearly all that we read in our day about democracy 
is pure speculation. No democracy has lasted long 
enough to enable one to write a treatise on it of 
much value. Almost everything that Mr. Lecky 
says of the working of democracy in America, or 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 287 

that lie has got from Mr. Bryce, though all true, 
fails to throw much light upon the future. 

The men who first began to write on democracy, 
toward the close of the last century and the begin- 
ning of this, had really a very small notion of its 
working on the scale which the modern world wit- 
nesses. Their only opportunities of observation 
lay in the history of the small Greek communities, 
of early Eome, of Venice and the minor Swiss can- 
tons, and of the early New England States. They 
had not for a moment pictured to themselves the 
government by universal suffrage of communities 
numbering tens of millions. Their democracies all 
met in the forum or market-place ; their leading 
men were known to every citizen. Nothing seemed 
easier than to fill the public offices by a mere show 
of hands. Every man was supposed to be intensely 
occupied with public affairs, to be eager to vote on 
them, and to be quite able to vote intelligently. 
The work of management had not a prominent 
place in any former democratic scheme. The 
" demagogue " — that is, the man who leads people 
astray by specious schemes, by hostility to the 
rich, or eagerness for war, or profuse prodigality, 
or winning eloquence — was well known. But the 
man who does not speak, who makes no public im- 
pression, who is not rich or eloquent or in any 
manner distinguished, yet who leads the voters and 



233 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

holds legislation in the hollow of his hand, had 
still to make his appearance. 

In the new, unforeseen, enormous democracy, 
40,000,000 to 100,000,000 in England, or France, 
or America, he is indispensable. In these large 
democracies, the work of bringing the popular will 
to bear in filling the offices of the government, or 
in performing any act of government, is one of 
great difficulty, which needs almost constant atten- 
tion from a large army of "workers." To influence, 
persuade, or inform this immense body of persons 
is no easy matter, as two antagonistic forces are 
always engaged in pulling it in different direc- 
tions. The diffusion among it of any one view of 
anything would be a serious task. To insure the 
triumph of either view is still more serious. Then, 
a very large proportion of the voters are not inter- 
ested in public questions at all, or their feeble in- 
terest has to be aroused and kept awake. Another 
large proportion do not desire to give themselves the 
trouble to vote. They have to be, in some manner, 
induced to go to the polls, or have to be prepared 
to go by numerous visits. The business of what is 
called the " canvass " in modem democracy is, in 
fact, something unlooked for and unprovided for by 
theoretical democrats. It has produced a profes- 
sion whose sole occupation is to get people to vote 
in a particular way. As the mass of voters in- 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 289 

creases, this profession, of course, becomes larger 
and more important. In my own opinion, its im- 
portance constitutes the strongest argument against 
woman suffrage. The doubling of the number of 
votes to be influenced or managed in any com- 
munity is a very grave consideration ; for not only 
have you to find such workers, with the certainty 
that their character will not be very high, but you 
have to pay them, and no provision for their pay- 
ment has ever been made in any scheme of demo- 
cratic government. The duty of remunerating 
them is thrown on the victorious parties at elec- 
tions ; in America, for a long time, this duty was 
discharged by distributing among them the smaller 
offices. There has been an escape from it here by 
what is called civil service reform, or, in other 
words, by competitive examination. In England, 
the aristocracy, finding the government patronage 
passing out of their hands, judiciously introduced 
the merit system, in time to save it from the in- 
coming democracy, but in France and Italy the 
tendency is still in the direction of " spoils." The 
passion for government places is strong, and the 
difficulty of getting anything done for the State, 
except in return for a place, grows apace, on the 
whole. If I said that the reluctance of a democracy 
to vote at all, or to vote right, was not foreseen by 

the early democratic advocates, and that they made 
19 



290 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

no provision for it in their system, I should not be 
very far wrong. This was the greatest mistake of 
the theoretic democrats. They never foresaw the 
big democracies. The working of democracy in 
America is something of which they had no con- 
ception. They did not anticipate the necessity of 
organizing and directing the suffrage, nor of the 
intervention of the boss and his assistants. 

When you come to examine this mistake, you 
find it consists really in the absence of provision 
for the selection of candidates by the multitude, or, 
in other words, in the absence of a nominating sys- 
tem. None of the books contain any direction for 
the performance of this work of nominating by a 
large democracy. The founders of the United 
States had apparently never thought of it. In 
their day, a few leading men met and chose one of 
their own number as a good person to fill, say, a 
legislative or other important place ; or a promi- 
nent man proposed himself to his fellow-citizens 
to fill it. For some time after the foundation of 
the government, a committee of Congress named 
candidates for the presidency. But it was soon 
seen that this would not do. The voters would not 
allow any one to do this work for them. An elected 
assembly had to do it, and the nominating conven- 
tion, in its various stages, was started. In other 
words, the business of electing officers was doubled 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 201 

by having another election to elect the people who 
were to select good people to elect. This work of 
nominating has added to the boss's, or manager's, 
power by adding to his duties. He has to see not 
only that people vote for the various candidates, 
but that they vote for those who have to choose 
them. More complication, more patience, more 
watchfulness, more dexterity. 

Under this regime, the nominating system, of 
which no theoretical writer had the least idea, has 
grown into a piece of machinery more complicated 
than the government itself. The man who man- 
ages it, who says who must compose the body 
which selects the candidates — that is, who desig- 
nates the delegates to the nominating convention 
— is really the most powerful man in the commu- 
nity. Every one who wishes to enter public life 
bows before him. No one who, being in public 
life, wishes to rise higher, no Representative who 
wishes to be Senator, no Governor who wishes to 
be President, will gainsay him or quarrel with 
him. Everybody but the President in a second 
term is at his beck. For similar reasons, he holds 
the legislators in his power. If they do not legis- 
late as he pleases, he will not allow them to come 
back to the legislature. He has to be consulted, 
in fact, about every office. He may be boss of a 
district, a city, or a state. The larger his do- 



292 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

minion and the denser its population, the more 
powerful he is. The people, being busy, are not 
willing to go to the trouble of voting at two elec- 
tions. As a rule, they do not vote at all for the 
nominating convention. This is, therefore, almost 
completely in the boss's hands. As he decides 
who shall compose it, he also decides what it shall 
do. In fact, in ordinary times and in the absence 
of great public excitement, he is the great man of a 
democratic community ; and yet neither he nor the 
nominating system which has made him what he is, 
was foreseen by any earty political thinker. There 
was no foreshadowing of the difficulty that democ- 
racy would experience in filling office, and no one 
has as yet devised any good plan for the purpose. 
Any person who to-day described the government, 
say, of New York, or Pennsylvania, or any other 
large American State, out of the books, would give 
no real idea of it. He would miss the real source 
of power, and the way in which it was infused into 
the machinery. If there be anything seriously 
wrong with democracy in America to-day, it lies in 
the nominating system, yet this attracts compara- 
tively little attention. 

Another new phenomenon which has greatly 
affected the development of democratic govern- 
ment, and has received no attention, is the growth 
of corporations. These aggregations of capital hi 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 293 

a few hands have created a new power in the 
State, whose influence on government has been 
very grave. They employ a vast number of 
voters, over whom their influence is paramount ; a 
single railroad company has in its service thou- 
sands of men. They own immense sums of 
money, which they think it but right to use freely 
for their own protection. In some States, men 
make a livelihood in the legislature by "striking" 
them, — that is, threatening them with hostile 
legislation, and getting themselves bought off by 
the agent of the corporation ; for each corporation 
is apt to keep an agent at the seat of government 
to meet these very demands, and makes no se- 
cret of it. Latterly the bosses have taken charge 
of this business themselves. They receive the 
money, and see that the legislature is properly 
managed in return. The companies have, in fact, 
created a code of morality to meet this exigency. 
The officers say that they are the custodians of 
large amounts of other people's property, which 
they are bound to defend, by whomsoever at- 
tacked. That wrong does exist in the State is not 
their affair. The reform of the legislature or of 
the State is not their affair. It is their business 
to keep safely what has been placed in their 
charge. Indeed, the levying of blackmail on com- 
panies, either as a contribution to campaign ex- 



294 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

penses or as fees to pay for protection, is now one 
of the principal sources of a boss's revenue, and, in 
States like New York, goes a good way toward en- 
abling him to defy hostile sentiment. It furnishes 
him with funds for subsidizing the legislature and 
the press. How to bring these corporations under 
the law, and at the same time protect them from 
unjust attacks, is one of the most serious problems 
of democratic government. But it can hardly be 
said to have received any discussion as yet. Cor- 
porations are as powerful as individual noblemen 
or aristocrats were in England in the last century, 
or in France before the Eevolution, but are far 
harder to get at or to bring to justice, from their 
habit of making terms with their enemies instead 
of righting them. 

This brings me naturally to two other serious 
and significant changes which have occurred with- 
in fifty years in democratic societies. I mean the 
decline of the legislatures, and the transfer of 
power, or rather of the work of government, from 
the rich to the poor. 

That this decline of the legislatures is not a 
mere decline in manners seems to me undeniable. 
It is a decline in the quality of the members in 
general respect, in education, in social position, in 
morality, in public spirit, in care and deliberation, 
and, I think I must add, in integrity, also. Legis- 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 295 

lation is more hasty and more voluminous, is 
drafted with less care, and enacted with less delib- 
eration and with much greater indifference to pub- 
lic opinion, particularly to instructed and thought- 
ful public opinion. This is said to be true of 
France and Italy, and in some degree of England, 
but it is especially true of America. Congress and 
the State legislatures are not what they were forty 
years ago. Both the Senate and the House con- 
tain fewer men of prominence and ability. The 
members are more slenderly instructed, but much 
more eagerly interested, in questions of political 
economy, finance, and taxation than they used to 
be, and more disposed to turn to account what 
they conceive to be their knowledge. They are 
more difficult to lead, and yet are more under 
the domination of their own cliques or sets. In 
the State legislatures, the boss is far more power- 
ful than he was. But little legislation originates 
with the members themselves. It is generally con- 
cocted outside and passed under orders. Few of 
the members are really chosen and elected by the 
people. They are suggested and returned by the 
boss of the State or district. They feel account- 
able to him, and not to the public. The old 
machinery of agitation, the public meeting and the 
press, produces little effect on them. Their mo- 
tives are rarely made known. Many of their acts, 



296 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

if not corrupt, are open to the suspicion of corrup- 
tion; some of them are bold attempts to extort 
money. All this is true, as I have said, in some 
degree or other, of all the countries in which 
democratic institutions have taken or begun to 
take root. These bodies have not answered the 
earlier expectations of democratic philosophers. 
The men who were expected to go to them do not 
go to them. The men who have served the public 
well in them do not return to the service. The in- 
fluence on them of the intellectual, cultivated, or 
instructed world is small. 

To account for this, or to say how it is to be 
mended, is, I admit, very difficult. Few subjects 
have done more to baffle reformers and investi- 
gators. It is the great puzzle of the heartiest 
friends of democracy. The matter is growing 
more serious in America as society is becoming 
richer and more complicated. As commerce in- 
creases, credit expands and interests multiply, of 
course the machinery of government increases in 
delicacy. Derangement becomes easier, repair 
more difficult. The effect, for instance, of insta- 
bility in taxation, or of adventures in foreign 
policy, upon foreign trade, or upon investment and 
the movements of capital, is very great; so that 
already merchants, bankers, and dealers in money 
are beginning to ask themselves whether it will be 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 297 

long possible to carry on the financial affairs of a 
great nation under a government so unskilful, and 
possessed of so little knowledge of the machinery 
of credit, as democratic governments generally 
are. This gives great importance to the question, 
What prospect is there of any change for the bet- 
ter ? What sign is there of anything of the kind ? 
As to this I confess I think the dependence of the 
optimist, if he descends to argument at all, must 
be on the general progress of the race in self- 
restraint, in love of order, and in a better knowl- 
edge, through experience, of the conditions of 
successful government. Any such process must 
necessarily be slow, and no results can be looked 
for until after the trial and failure of many ex- 
periments. 

In other words, I do not look for the improve- 
ment of democratic legislatures in quality within 
any moderate period. What I believe democratic 
societies will do, in order to improve their govern- 
ment and make better provision for the protection 
of property and the preservation of order, is to 
restrict the power of these assemblies and shorten 
their sittings, and to use the referendum more 
freely for the production of really important laws. 
I have very little doubt that, before many years 
elapse, the American people will get their govern- 
ment more largely from constitutional conventions, 



298 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

and will confine the legislatures within very narrow 
limits and make them meet at rare intervals. The 
tendencies all over the Union are in this direction, 
and Switzerland, the most democratic country in 
Europe, is showing the way distinctly toward 
less law-making and more frequent consultation of 
the people at large. I believe, for instance, that 
after a very few years' experience of the transfer 
of the currency question, which has now begun, to 
the management of popular suffrage, the legal 
tender quality of money, which is now behind the 
whole trouble, will be abolished, and the duty of 
the government will be confined simply to weigh- 
ing and stamping. The usefulness of the legal ten- 
der now is ludicrously disproportion ed to the noise 
made about it. Except as a rule for fixing the 
denomination in which debtors must pay their 
debts in the absence of an agreement — which 
rarely causes any dispute — and for enabling debtors 
to cheat their creditors by paper money or the adul- 
teration of coin— which is not infrequent — it is 
difficult to see what good purpose legal tender 
serves. It is almost certain that the day will come 
when it will be seen that no democratic govern- 
ment is fit to be entrusted with the power of giv- 
ing any substance legal tender quality, and that 
the very best solutior^of the money problem is to 
be found in letting people make their own bar- 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 299 

gains — a solution which will be hastened by the 
increasing tendency to settle contracts, make pur- 
chases, and pay debts by check or draft. 

The other corrective of which I see signs, 
though of less importance, is the increasing ability 
or willingness of business men to separate their 
business from their politics, and to refuse any 
longer to put money into the hands of party 
agents to do as they please with it. This use of 
money, especially since the growth of the tariff 
question in importance, has been one of the great 
sources of the degradation of American politics, 
because it supports the excesses or abuses of the 
nominating system by strengthening the hands of 
the boss ; for it is he who generally receives the 
funds. But it would be. absurd to build great 
hopes of progress on the mere cessation of an 
abuse. It is a thing to be noted rather than dwelt 
on. All that we can say with certainty is that no 
Western society is likely, in modern times, to let 
itself run completely down, as the ancient socie- 
ties often did, without vigorous attempts at re- 
covery and improvement. The general belief in 
progress which now prevails, the greatly increased 
desire to extract comfort out of life (and comfort 
includes quiet and order), the more scientific spirit 
of the time, the disposition of all classes to assume 
social responsibility, and the sense of what the 



300 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

French call " solidarity " diffused by the press, as- 
sure us that every means of progress will be tried, 
that no defect will be submitted to indefinitely ; 
but what means of improvement will be most 
effective, and what safeguards will be found most 
reliable, he would be a rash man who would vent- 
ure to predict in detail. 

As to the transfer of the government to the 
poor, it should be remembered that, except during 
very short periods in ancient democracies, the 
world has been governed by rich men ; that is, by 
the great landholders or the great merchants. 
This is true of all the ancient republics and of all 
the modern monarchies. The unfitness of poor 
men for the important offices of legislation and 
administration has been generally acted on in the 
modern world, as a State doctrine. Every govern- 
ment has been a rich man's government. It is 
only in some of the smaller Swiss cantons that 
departures from this rule have been made. But, 
as a rule, in democratic societies in our day, govern- 
ment has been transferred to poor men. These 
poor men find themselves in possession of very 
great power over rich communities. Through the 
taxing power rich corporations and rich individu- 
als are at their mercy. They are not restrained 
by tradition ; they are often stimulated by envy or 
other anti-social passions. If it were not for the 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 301 

restrictions imposed in American States by the 
Constitution, the lives of rich men and of com- 
panies would be full of difficulty. There has 
grown up around this change the foreshadowing 
of a code of morality in which men's right to be 
rich is called in question, and the spoliation of 
them, if done under forms of law, is not an offense 
against morality. This, again, is counterbalanced 
or neutralized by the general popular tendency to 
make the accumulation of wealth the one sign of 
worldly success, and to estimate men by the size 
of their income, from whatever source derived. 
There is probably in America to-day a nearer ap- 
proach to a literal rendering of the English term 
"worth," as measuring a man's possessions, than 
ever occurred elsewhere ; that is, the term is more 
fully descriptive of the fact than it has ever been. 
Inevitably, there has appeared side by side with 
this a certain distrust of the opinions of persons 
who have not made money, which has naturally 
had an injurious effect on the government, and 
has, along with several other causes, contributed 
to the exclusion of the learned or professional 
class from the work of administration. A faithful 
description of the position of the wealthy class in 
America to-day would probably say that the accu- 
mulation of wealth by a man's own exertion is ad- 
mired by the public, and greatly respected if he 



302 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

gives it fully to public objects, but that his at- 
tempt to participate in the work of government is 
viewed with a certain jealousy, while contributions 
for party purposes are eagerly received by the 
bosses, and offices are occasionally given in return 
for them by regular bargain. It is in this way, in 
fact, as well as through lower forms of corruption, 
that individual wealth protects itself against the 
consequences of the change to which I have al- 
ready called attention, the transfer of the govern- 
ment to the poor and obscure. Property still has 
weight in public affairs, but not open weight, and 
the power of persuading the legislators has been 
taken from the public orator, or writer, who 
wielded it in the beginning of the century, and 
turned over to the successful man of affairs, who 
has schemes to carry out, but cannot waste time 
in arguing about them with anybody. 

Among the minor illustrations of the failure to 
foresee, afforded by the early founders of democ- 
racy and speculators on it, is the virtual abolition 
of the board of electors who were to elect the 
President. They are now a mere formal body of 
registrars, who have no more to do with the results 
than a voting machine. Another is the total loss 
of the power of choice by the legislatures in elect- 
ing Senators of the United States. The legisla- 
tures no longer choose them. They are chosen by 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 



303 



the managers of the party outside, and the legis- 
lators are, in fact, elected to carry out this choice. 
A more complete disappointment than these two 
modes of bringing great care to bear on two im- 
portant operations of government could hardly be 
imagined, and yet it is a disappointment which 
does not appear to have been suspected as likely 
to come. The present generation of reformers are 
nearly as eager to abolish the Electoral College 
and the legislative election of Senators, after a 
century of experience, as the framers of the Con- 
stitution were to establish them. The prevailing 
desire is to remit the work in both cases to the 
popular vote. 

This brings to our notice two tendencies, ap- 
parently, but only apparently, opposing, in Amer- 
ican opinion. One is to throw as much of the 
nominating or canvassing or preparatory work as 
possible on individual men, like bosses and work- 
ers ; the other is to make the constituency of each 
important office as wide as possible. The whole 
people of the Union would like to vote directly for 
the President, the whole people of a State would 
like to vote for a Senator, and the whole people of 
a city would like to vote for an almost despotic 
mayor, but few want to take any trouble in creat- 
ing or arranging machinery for choosing them. 
The work of " getting delegates " to nominating 



304 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

conventions, and making other preparations for 
elections, is left to professionals ; that is, to men 
who do little else, and who get a living out of this 
work. The exhortation of political moralists to 
" attend the primaries " has become almost a joke 
among the class to whom it is mainly addressed. 

The discussion of all these matters — that is, the 
observation of the working of democracy on a 
large scale during the past century — should be the 
work of any writer on democracy from the philo- 
sophic point of view in our day. Mr. Bryce's book 
is mainly descriptive. He does not foreshadow 
consequences or suggest remedies. Mr. Lecky is, 
to a certain extent, right in drawing illustrations 
from him, but we can read Mr. Bryce as well as 
Mr. Lecky can, and we know better than he what 
corrections or allowances to make. There are tens 
of thousands of Americans more troubled by many 
American phenomena than any European observer, 
and far more intelligently ; yet it is difficult for 
any American to deal with them adequately as yet, 
for obvious reasons. 

In the first place, political speculation is some- 
what discountenanced or discouraged in Ameri- 
ca by the excessive cultivation of what is called 
"patriotism," not unnatural in a young people, 
whose growth in wealth and numbers has been 
prodigious beyond example. This "patriotism" 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 305 

lias been made by the multitude to consist in hold- 
ing everything that is, to be exactly right, or 
easily remedied. A complaining or critical man, 
as a speculator is apt to be, is therefore set down 
as a person "unpatriotic," or hostile to his coun- 
try. He may object to the other party, but he 
must not find fault with the workings of his 
government. The consequence is that any man 
who expects to make his way in politics, or even to 
succeed comfortably in a profession or business, is 
strongly tempted to proclaim incessantly his great 
content with the existing order of things, and to 
treat everything " American " as sacred. Criticism 
of the government or of political tendencies is 
apt to be considered a sign of infidelity to the 
republic, and admiration for something foreign. 
More than this, an American is himself part of 
what he discusses or proposes to amend. He has 
his prejudices, some of them hereditary; he has 
tastes and associations, few of which are corrected 
by contact with or knowledge of different forms of 
society ; and his range of possibilities is therefore 
narrow. 

"What is most serious of all is that we have not, 
as England or France or Germany has, one great 
capital, in which all the philosophers and specula- 
tors, and in fact men of education, live and make 

a philosophical or political atmosphere, are influ- 
20 



306 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC US-SAYS 

enced by each other's opinions, enjoy each other's 
society, profit by each other's criticism, and trans- 
mit to the provinces, as from a court of last resort, 
final judgments on literature, art, and politics, and 
snap their fingers at country denunciation and 
grumbling. Our thinkers are scattered all over 
the country, hundreds or thousands of miles away 
from their congeners. They brood rather than 
speculate. They live among "plain people." 
They have a human desire to be comfortable 
and happy with their neighbors, to receive their 
approval and respect. They have but few oppor- 
tunities of intercourse with their fellows in other 
parts of the country. Even in cases like the 
Venezuelan affair, or like the greenback or silver 
" craze," it is so easy to fall in with the crowd, or 
still easier to be silent, so hard to be generally de- 
nounced as " unpatriotic " or as a " Mugwump," 
or to be accused of foreign tastes or leanings, that 
attempts to point out a " more excellent way " are 
somewhat under a cloud. Only men of marked 
ability or strong character make them, and even 
for these the work is wearisome and a little dis- 
heartening. In short, the influence of the scholarly, 
thinking, philosophical class is not felt in Ameri- 
can progress nearly as much as it ought to be. 

This is the more regrettable because no rational 
observer can suppose that the government of the 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 307 

United States is destined to retain indefinitely its 
present form. It is sure, like all governments 
which have preceded it, to change, and probably 
change from century to century. The history of 
all republics and of all monarchies, like the history 
of man himself, is one of incessant change. The 
Greek republics, the Koman republic and empire, 
the Venetian republic, the French and English 
monarchies, have all undergone modifications from 
generation to generation, in institution, laws, and 
manners. Since Elizabeth the English monarchy 
has experienced at least four enormous changes, 
involving complete transfer of power and a com- 
plete revolution in political ideas. Even China is 
succumbing to what is called "the spirit of the 
age." To suppose that we, with forty-five repub- 
lics, indulging in annual experiments in govern- 
ment, shall be exempt from the general law is 
absurd. These changes consist, too, as a rule, in 
adaptation of the institutions of the country to 
an altered condition of popular sentiment, to the 
revelation of new dangers, to the decline or 
deterioration of some law or custom. The Eng- 
lish in 1649 would not submit to a monarch like 
Charles I. In 1688 they would not submit to a 
monarch like James II. In 1832 they would not 
submit to a Parliament like that in which Pitt 
thundered and Burke reasoned. In other words, 



308 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the history of Rations is the history of incessant 
attempts, fortunate or unfortunate, to better them- 
selves. 

For these reasons and many others, all disquisi- 
tion on the phenomena of modern democracy in 
any community as final, or as certain to result in 
despotism or in any other great calamity, appears 
to me exceedingly inadequate. Democracy in 
America, like democracy and monarchy elsewhere, 
is following the course of other political societies. 
It is suffering from unforeseen evils, as well as 
enjoying unforeseen blessings. It will probably 
be worse before it is better. It is tiying a great 
many experiments in laws and manners, of which 
some, doubtless, will be hideous failures. The 
regime of " crazes " through which it is now pass- 
ing is very discouraging, but it is engaged, like 
most other civilized societies, in a search after 
remedies. 

To illustrate my meaning, let me cite the case of 
civil service reform. One of the unforeseen evils 
developed by the new democracy not long after 
the foundation of the government was the practice 
of offering all the places, high and low, in the 
government service, to the victors at each election 
as " spoils." It took fifty years to bring this evil 
to what I may call perfection ; that is, to reveal 
in practice exactly how it would work, how it 



THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 309 

would affect legislation and administration and 
public life. It was something novel at first, 
because although, under European monarchies, 
places were given away as rewards to favorites, 
and were even sold, they were permanent, and the 
field of distribution was small. It became deep- 
ly rooted in the political manners of the people, 
and by large numbers was looked on as the true 
American system of appointment, — the only one 
suited to a democratic republic. Two generations, 
at least, had never seen any other system. A full 
discussion of its injurious effects on public life and 
on the public service was not begun till after the 
civil war. The advocates of a change were met 
at first with intense hostility and ridicule from the 
politicians and from members of Congress, and 
were received with great indifference by the 
general public. Yet, in five years they succeeded 
in making some impression upon the President. 
Within ten years after the war they had secured 
some favorable legislation. Every President since 
then has made further concessions to them, and 
this year the final transfer of the whole federal 
service, including 85,200 places, to the merit 
system has been made. I do not believe that, 
at the time when the agitation for civil service 
reform began, there was any evil or abuse in the 
government, an attack on which seemed so hope- 



310 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

less, and yet this evil lias disappeared within one 
generation. I cite it as an illustration of the 
danger or error of treating any democratic failure 
as permanent or hopeless, or denying to any 
democratic society the capacity and determina- 
tion to remedy its own defects in some direction 
or other by some means or other. No society 
in our time is willing to deteriorate openly, or 
ever does so long, without struggling for salva- 
tion. 



THE EXPENDITUKE OF EICH MEN 

From the earliest times of which we have any 
historical knowledge rich men have had to exercise 
a good deal of ingenuity in expending their in- 
come. The old notion that wealth is desired for 
the sake of power was never completely true. It 
has always been desired also, as a rule, for the 
sake of display. The cases have been rare in 
which rich men have been content to be secretly 
or unobtrusively rich. They have always wished 
people to know they were rich. It has, also, from 
the earliest times, been considered appropriate 
that display should accompany power. A power- 
ful man who was not wealthy and made no dis- 
play, has, in all ages, been considered a strange, 
exceptional person. As soon as a man became 
powerful, the world has always thought it becom- 
ing that he should also be rich, and should furnish 
evidences of his riches that would impress the 
popular imagination. As a rule, he has sought to 
make this impression. He has liked people at 
least to see what he could do if he would. Of 



312 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

course, except in the case of rulers, lie could 
not put his money into armies or fleets. Conse- 
quently, as a private man, he has put it into tan- 
gible, visible property, things which people could 
see and envy, or wonder over. A rich man who 
did not do this was always set down as a miser, or 
something very like it, in some way queer or eccen- 
tric. He, too, has been held bound to spend his 
money in ways in which the public in general ex- 
pected him to spend it, and in which it had be- 
come usual for men of his kind to expend it. His 
expenditure was, therefore, in a certain sense, the 
product of the popular manners. If a man in Eng- 
land, for instance, expends money like a rich Turk- 
ish pacha, or Indian prince, he is frowned on or 
laughed at. But if he keeps a great racing-stable, 
or turns large tracts of land into a grouse moor or a 
deer forest, in which to amuse himself by killing 
wild animals, it is thought natural and simple. 

But one of the odd things about wealth is the 
small impression the preachers and moralists have 
ever made about it. From the very earliest times 
its deceitfulness, its inability to produce happi- 
ness, its fertility in temptation, its want of connec- 
tion with virtue and purity, have been among the 
commonplaces of religion and morality. Hesiod 
declaims against it, and exposes its bad effects on 
the character of its possessors, and Christ makes 



TEE EXPENDITURE OF RICU MEN 313 

it exceedingly hard for the rich man to get 
to heaven. The folly of winning wealth or car- 
ing for it has a prominent place in mediaeval 
theology. Since the Reformation there has not 
been so much declamation against it, but the rich 
man's position has always been held, even among 
Protestants, to be exceedingly perilous. His 
temptations might not be so great as they used to 
be, but his responsibilities were quadrupled. The 
modern philanthropic movement, in particular 
has laid heavy burdens on him. He is now al- 
lowed to have wealth, but the ethical writers and 
the clergy supervise his expenditure closely. If 
he does not give freely for charitable objects, or 
for the support of institutions of beneficence, he is 
severely criticised. His stewardship is insisted 
on. In the Middle Ages this was his own look- 
out. If he endowed monasteries, or bequeathed 
foundations for widows, or old men, or orphans, 
it was with the view of making provision for his 
own soul in the future world, and did not stand 
much higher in morals or religion than that old 
English legacy for the expenses of burning here- 
tics. But in our times he is expected to endow 
for love of his kind or country, and gifts for his 
soul's sake would be considered an expression of 
selfishness. 

In Europe, as I have said, the association of 



314 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

displays of wealth with political power has lasted 
since states were founded. It was largely made 
possible in the ancient world through slavery. 
From what we know through architectural remains, 
or historic record, there was no length, in that 
world, to which a great man could not go in the 
display of his possessions. What we hear or see 
of Hadrian's villa, or Diocletian's palace at Spala- 
tro, makes Versailles seem a mere bauble. The 
stories told of the villas of Lucullus, or Maecenas, 
even if half true, show that our modern rich men 
know but little of the possibilities of luxury. 
Pliny's description of his own villa in his Letters 
shows that they were far more than half true, that 
not one of our modern rich men has done one- 
quarter of what he might have done for material 
enjoyment. Undoubtedly the non-existence of 
slavery has been the greatest check on his extrava- 
gance. Could he have the same absolute control 
over domestic servants, he would probably treat 
himself to more extraordinary varieties of luxury 
in the matter of habitation and clothing and equi- 
pages. The traditions of the Eoman Empire in 
this matter perished with the Empire. When the 
modern rich man came into possession of the 
means and appliances of civilization, he found 
himself in a new world, in which it was vastly 
more difficult to secure steady, uncomplaining per- 



THE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 315 

sonal service, and in which money was harder to 
get hold of. But what was within his reach, he 
readily used. The mediaeval noble all over Europe 
after the Renaissance, transferred himself to mag- 
nificent abodes, and surrounded himself with a 
small army of servants. But he did this in obe- 
dience, I will not say to public opinion, for there 
was no such thing, but to popular notions of the 
fitting. It was held, as I have said, but becoming 
that a man who occupied his political place, who 
counted for so much in the state, whose descent 
was considered so illustrious, who owned such 
vast tracts of land, should live in a very great 
house, and be followed by a great retinue, should 
have his gentlemen and pages, and his numerous 
servants to wait upon him. When Madame de 
Sevigne travelled in the seventeenth century to 
Paris from her chateau in the country, she went 
with two carriages, seven horses, and four men 
on horseback, and each carriage had four horses ; 
yet she was only a person of moderate fortune. 
Madame de Montespan, when she went to Vichy, 
had six horses in her coach ; another behind with 
six maids. Then she had two fourgons, or bag- 
gage-wagons, six mules, and a dozen men on horse- 
back, forty-five persons in all. Once when Madame 
de Sevigne's son came home from the army, her 
man of business had fifteen hundred men under 



316 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

arms to receive hiin in the court of the chateau. 
When the Marquis de Lavardin came to see her, 
he had officers and guards and trumpets and 
twenty gentlemen. The Montmorencis and Itali- 
ans and Soubises and Colignys made still greater 
display. The same thing went on in England. 
The rich men lived and travelled surrounded by 
splendor, because they were really great men. 
They had power over hundreds and thousands of 
fortunes, if not of lives. They had a share in the 
government. They were largely above the law. 
" God Almighty," as a pious but well-born French 
woman said, " thought twice before damning one 
of them." Down to the end of the last century the 
enmity of a peer, as was recently remarked, was 
enough to ruin a man in England. 

All this is now changed in Europe. As power 
has left the upper classes, display has ceased. To 
be quiet and unobserved is the mark of distinction. 
Women of Madame de Sevigne's rank travel in 
dark-colored little broughams. Peers in England 
are indistinguishable when they move about in 
public, from any one else. Distinction is sought 
in manners, in speech, in general simplicity of de- 
meanor, rather than in show of any kind. An at- 
tempt to produce on anybody, high or low, any 
impression but one of envy, by sumptuousness of 
living or equipage, would prove a total failure. It 



THE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 317 

may be said, without exaggeration, that the quiet- 
ness of every description is now the " note " of the 
higher class in all countries in Europe — quietness 
of manner, of voice, of dress, of equipages, of, in 
short, nearly everything which brings them in con- 
tact with their fellow-men. Comfort is the quest 
of the " old nobility " generally. Ostentation is 
left to the newly enriched, but there can hardly be 
a doubt that this is largely due to loss of power. 
Wealth now means nothing but wealth. The Eu- 
ropean noble was, in fact, everywhere but in Ven- 
ice, a great territorial lord. It was incumbent on 
him as a mark of his position, as soon as he came 
out of his mediaeval " keep," to live in a great 
house, if only for purposes of entertainment. His 
retinue required large accommodation ; his guests 
required more, and more still was added for the 
needs of the popular imagination. But the system 
of which he was the product, which made his cha- 
teau or mansion grow out of the soil like his crops, 
was never transferred to this country. The few 
large grants which marked our early history never 
brought forth large mansions or great retinues. 
The great houses of that period, such as those of 
the Yan Eensselaers or Livingstons on the Hud- 
son, or of the planters on the James River, are 
simply moderate-sized mansions which, on most 
estates in England or France, would be considered 



318 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

small. Hospitality was in none of them exercised 
on anything like the European scale. None of 
them was ever occupied by anybody who exercised, 
anything more than influence over his fellow-citi- 
zens. In fact most of them are to-day mainly in- 
teresting as showing the pains taken to put up 
comfortable abodes in what were then very out-of- 
the-way places. 

All this amounts to saying that the building of 
great houses was, down to our own time, a really 
utilitarian mode of spending wealth. It was in- 
tended to maintain and support the influence of 
the ruling class by means which was sure to im- 
press the popular mind, and which the popular 
mind called for. The great territorial owners had 
a recognized place in government and society, 
which demanded, at first a strong, and later, an ex- 
tensive, dwelling-place. It was, in short, the prod- 
uct and indication of contemporary manners as 
dwelling-places generally are. If we travel through 
a country in which castles and fortified houses 
are numerous, as they used to be prior to the four- 
teenth century all over Europe, we conclude in- 
fallibly that the law is weak, and that neighbors 
make armed attacks on each other in the style de- 
scribed in the Paston Letters. If we find, coming 
down later, as in the Elizabethan period, strong- 
holds abandoned for extensive and ornamental res- 



THE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 319 

idences with plenty of unprotected windows, we 
conclude that the government is omnipotent and 
the great men live in peace. If we go through a 
democratic country like Switzerland, and find 
moderation in the size of houses and in the man- 
ner of living, the custom of the country, we con- 
clude that the majority is in power, and that every 
man has his say in the management of the state. 
In short it may be truly said that dwelling-places, 
from the Indian's tepee up to the palace of the 
great noble, indicate, far more clearly than books 
or constitutions, the political and social condition 
of the country. 

It is only of late years that we have had among 
us a class capable of equalling or outdoing the 
European aristocracy in wealth. American fort- 
unes are now said to be greater than any of those 
of Europe, and nearly, if not quite, as numerous. 
But the rich American is face to face with a prob- 
lem by which the European was not, and is not, 
troubled. He has to decide for himself, what is 
decided for the European by tradition, by custom, 
by descent, if not by responsibilities, how to spend 
his money. The old rich class in Europe may be 
said to inherit their obligations of every kind. 
When a man comes of age, if he inherits wealth, 
and is of what is called " good family," he finds 
settled for him the kind of house he shall live in, 



320 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the number of horses and servants he shall keep, 
the extent to which he shall entertain. His in- 
come is, in truth, already disposed of by will, or 
settlement, or custom. There are certain people 
he is expected to maintain in a certain way, a cer- 
tain style in which he is to live. This has led to, 
what appears to the American, the curious reluc- 
tance of the Englishman " to lay down his car- 
riage." To certain families, houses, and properties, 
to certain social positions, in short, is attached the 
obligation of " keeping a carriage." It is one of 
the outward and visible signs of the owner's place 
in the state. To the American it is generally a mere 
convenience, which some years he possesses and 
other years he does not, and the absence of which 
excites no remark among his neighbors. If an 
Englishman of a certain rank gives it up, it indi- 
cates the occurrence of a pecuniary catastrophe. It 
advertises misfortune to the world. It says that 
he has been vanquished in a struggle, that his posi- 
tion is in danger, and his friends sympathize with 
him accordingly, partly because the women of his 
family do not, as with us, use public conveyances 
in the cities. 

From all these responsibilities and suggestions 
the American, when he " makes his pile," is free. 
He can say for himself how the owner of millions 
in a country like this ought to live. He may have 



THE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 321 

one servant, eat in the basement, sup on Sunday 
evenings on scalloped oysters, and sit in his shirt- 
sleeves on his own stoop in a one-hundred-thou- 
sand-dollar house, and nobody will make any re- 
mark. Or he may surround himself with lackeys, 
whom he treats as equals, and who teach him how 
the master of lackeys should behave, give gorgeous 
entertainments to other rich men like himself, 
at which his wife will eclipse in finery all other 
wives, and nobody will express interest or surprise 
except people who long for invitations from him. 
Or he may, after a period oi such luxury, " burst 
up," sell everything out, and go live in Orange or 
Flushing. Or his wife may " tire of housekeeping," 
and they may retire to an expensive apartment in 
the Waldorf, or Savoy, after storing their furni- 
ture, or selling it at auction. What this indicates 
is simply that great wealth has not yet entered 
into our manners. No rules have yet been drawn 
to guide wealthy Americans in their manner of 
life. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Prussians, Austri- 
ans, Swiss, of rank and of fortune, have ways of 
spending their money, notions of their own of 
what their position and personal dignity require. 
But nothing of the kind is yet national in America. 
The result is that we constantly see wealthy Ameri- 
cans travelling in Europe, without the slightest 
idea of what they will or ought to do next, except 
21 



322 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

get rid of their money as fast as possible, by the 
payment of monstrous prices and monstrous fees, 
or the committal of other acts which to Europeans 
are simply vulgar eccentricities, but which our 
countrymen try to cover up by calling them 
"American" when "irrational" would be a more 
fitting appellation. Some of this confusion of 
mind is due, as Matthew Arnold has suggested in 
one of his letters, to the absence among us of an 
aristocracy to set an example of behavior to our 
rich men. In European countries the newly en- 
riched drop easily into the ranks of the aristocracy 
by a mere process of imitation. They try to dress 
and behave in the same way, and though a little 
fun may be made of them at first, they and their 
sons soon disappear in the crowd. 

Ours do not enjoy such an advantage. They 
have to be, therefore, their own models, and there 
are finesses of manners and points of view in an 
aristocracy which are rarely got hold of except by 
long contact. By aristocracy I do not mean sim- 
ply rich or well-born people, but people who have 
studied and long practised the social art, which is 
simply another name for the art of being agree- 
able. The notion that it consists simply in being 
kindly, and doing pleasant things for people, and 
having plenty of money, is one of the American 
delusions. The social art, like all other arts, is 



TEE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 323 

only carried to perfection, or to high excellence, 
by people who carefully practise it, or pay great 
attention to it. It consists largely in what are 
called " minor morals," that is, in doing things in 
society which long custom has settled on as suita- 
ble for the set of people with whom one associates. 
But it is full of what seem trifles, and which often 
become absurd if practised as a branch of learning 
acquired out of books. Like a large number of 
other things in civilized life, to be well practised 
it needs to be practised without thought, as some- 
thing one is bred to. It is better obtained from 
books, or by study, than not at all, but it is most 
easily learned by observation. Ease of manner, 
taste in dress, tone of voice, insight into the ways 
of looking at small things of well-mannered peo- 
ple, are most easily acquired by seeing them in 
others. The benefit of watching adepts in this 
art have been enjoyed by but few rich men in 
America, and the result is that the rich world 
with us can hardly be called a social world at all. 
There can hardly be said to be among us what is 
called in Europe a " world " or "monde," in which 
there is a stock of common traditional manners 
and topics and interests, which men and women 
have derived from their parents, and a common 
mode of behavior which has assumed an air of 
sanctity. Our very rich people are generally sim- 



324 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ply rich people with everything in the way of so- 
cial life to learn, but with a desire to learn which 
is kept in check by the general belief in the com- 
munity that they have nothing at all to learn, and 
that it is enough to be rich. 

That, under these circumstances, they should, in 
somewhat slavish imitation of Europe, choose the 
most conspicuous European mode of asserting 
social supremacy, the building of great houses, is 
not surprising. But in this imitation they make 
two radical mistakes. They want the two princi- 
pal reasons for European great houses. One is 
that great houses are in Europe signs either of 
great territorial possessions, or of the practice of 
hospitality on a scale unknown among us. A very 
large house in the country in Europe indicates 
either that the owner is the possessor of great es- 
tates, or that he means to draw on some great 
capital for a large body of guests whom he will 
amuse by field sports out-of-doors, or who will 
amuse each other in-doors. These are the excuses 
for great houses in England, France, or Austria. 
The owner is a great landholder, and has in this 
way from time immemorial given notice of the 
fact. Or he is the centre of a large circle of 
men and women who have practised the social art, 
who know how to idle and have the means to idle, 
can talk to each other so as to entertain each 



THE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 325 

other, about sport, or art, or literature, or politics, 
are, in short, glad to meet each other in luxurious 
surroundings. 

No such conditions exist in America. In the 
first place, we have no great landholders, and there 
is no popular recognition of the fact that a great 
landowner, or great man of any sort, needs a great 
house. In the second place, we have no capital to 
draw on for a large company of men and women 
who will amuse each other in a social way, even 
from Friday to Monday. The absence of any- 
thing we can call society, that is, the union of 
wealth and culture in the same persons, in all the 
large American cities, except possibly Boston, is 
one of the marked and remarkable features of our 
time. It is, therefore, naturally what one might 
expect, that we rarely hear of Americans figuring 
in cultivated circles in England. Those who go 
there with social aspirations desire most to get into 
what is called " the Prince of Wales's set," in which 
their national peculiarities furnish great amuse- 
ment among a class of people to whom amusement 
is the main thing. It would be easy enough to fill 
forty or fifty rooms from " Friday to Monday " in 
a house near New York or Boston. But what 
kind of company would it be ? How many of the 
guests would have anything to say to each other ? 
Suppose "stocks " to be ruled out, where would 



326 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

the topics of conversation be found ? Would there 
be much to talk about except the size of the host's 
fortune, and that of some other persons present? 
How many of the men would wish to sit with the 
ladies in the evening and participate with them in 
conversation ? Would the host attempt two such 
gatherings, without abandoning his efforts in dis- 
gust, selling out the whole concern, and going to 
Europe ? 

One fatal difficulty in the way of such modes of 
hospitality with us is the difference of social cult- 
ure between our men and women. As a rule, in 
the European circle called " society " the men and 
women are interested in the same topics, and these 
topics are entirely outside what is called " busi- 
ness ; " they are literary or artistic, or in some de- 
gree intellectual, or else sporting. With us such 
topics are left almost entirely to women. What- 
ever is done among us for real society is done by 
women. It is they, as a general rule, who have 
opinions about music, or the drama, or literature, 
or philosophy, or dress, or art. It is they who 
have reflected on these things, who know some- 
thing and have something to say about them. It is 
a rare thing for husbands or sons to share in these 
interests. Eor the most part they care little about 
them ; they go into no society but dinners, and at 
dinners they talk stocks and money. A meeting 



THE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 327 

of women for discussion on such subjects would 
be a dreadful bore to them. The husband feels 
better employed in making money for his wife 
and daughters to spend seeing the sights abroad. 
This difference in the culture of the sexes, and 
in the practice of the social art, is in fact so 
great in some parts of the country as to make 
happy marriages rare or brief. It makes immense 
houses, with many chambers, in town or country, 
almost an absurdity in our present stage of prog- 
ress. 

Another, and the most serious reason against 
spending money in America in building great 
dwelling-houses, is, as I have already indicated, 
that the dwellings of leading men in every country 
should be in some sort of accord with the national 
manners. If there be what is called a " note " in 
American polity, it is equality of conditions, that 
there should neither be an immoderate display of 
wealth, nor of poverty, that no man should be 
raised so far above the generality in outward seem- 
ing as to excite either envy, hatred, or malice ; 
that, above all things, wealth should not become 
an object of apprehension. We undoubtedly owe 
to suspicion and dislike of great wealth and dis- 
plays of it, the Bryan platform, with its absurdities 
and its atrocities. The accumulation of great fort- 
unes since the war, honestly it may be, but in 



328 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

ways mysterious or unknown to the plain man, has 
introduced among us the greatest of European 
curses — class hatred, the feeling among one large 
body of the community that they are being cheated 
or oppressed by another body. To erect " palatial 
abodes " is to flaunt in the faces of the poor and 
the unsuccessful and greedy the most conspicu- 
ous possible evidence that the owner not only has 
enormous amounts of money, but does not know 
what to do with it. We know that from the earliest 
times there has not been, and we know that there 
is not now, the smallest popular dislike to the suc- 
cessful man's " living like a gentleman," as the say- 
ing is, that is, with quiet comfort, and with a rea- 
sonable amount of personal attendance. But the 
popular gall rises when an American citizen ap- 
pears, in the character of a Montmorenci, or a 
Noailles, or a Westminster, in a gorgeous palace, at 
the head of a large army of foreign lackeys. They 
ask themselves what does this mean? Whither 
are we tending? Is it possible we are about to re- 
new on this soil, at the end of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the extravagances and follies of the later Ko- 
man Empire and of the age of Louis XIV. ? What 
it does mean, in most cases, is simply that the citi- 
zen has more money than he finds it easy to dis- 
pose of. Consequently the only thing he can think 
of is building a residence for himself, which, like 



THE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 329 

Versailles, shall astonish the world, if in no other 
way, by its cost. 

All this may be said without denying in the 
least the great liberality of American millionnaires. 
What colleges, schools, museums, and charities 
owe to them is something new in the history of 
the world. They have set Europe an example in 
this matter which is one of the glories of America. 
It is a pity to have them lessen its effect or turn 
attention away from it, by extravagance or frivol- 
ity, the more so because there is a mode still open 
to them of getting rid of cumbersome money, 
which is untried, and is full of honest fame and 
endless memory. We mean the beautifying of our 
cities with monuments and buildings. This should 
really be, and, I believe, will eventually become, 
the American way of displaying wealth. Consider- 
ing what our wealth is and what the burden of our 
taxation is, and, as shown by the Chicago Exhi- 
bition, what the capabilities of our native archi- 
tecture are, the condition of our leading cities as 
regards monuments of sculpture or architecture, 
is one of the sorrowful wonders of our condition. 
We are enormously rich, but except one or two 
things, like the Boston Library and the Washing- 
ton public buildings, what have we to show ? Al- 
most nothing. Ugliness from the artistic point of 
view is the mark of all our cities. The stranger 



330 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

looks through them in vain for anything but popu- 
lation and hotels. No arches, no great churches, 
no court-houses, no city halls, no statues, no tombs, 
no municipal splendors of any description, nothing 
but huge inns. 

I fear, too, of this poverty we are not likely soon 
to be rid, owing to the character of the govern- 
ment. It will always, under the regime of universal 
suffrage, be difficult in any city to get the average 
tax-payer to do much for art, or to allow art, as we 
see in the case of the Sherman Monument, to be 
made anything but the expression of his own ad- 
miration for somebody. It is almost impossible to 
prevent monuments or buildings being jobs or cari- 
catures, through the play of popular politics on a 
subject which was no more meant for its treatment 
by majorities than the standard of value. Govern- 
ments in all European countries do much for art. 
They erect fine public buildings under the best 
artistic conditions. They endow and maintain 
picture-galleries and museums. In fact the culti- 
vation of art is one of their accepted functions. 
Nothing of the kind is known among us. It would 
infuriate Populists and Bryanites to know that our 
Treasury was putting tens of thousands of dollars 
into books and paintings, or bric-a-brac, or even 
into art-education. An £cole des Beaux Arts, or 
National Gallery, seems to be an impossibility for 



THE EXPENDITURE OF RICH MEN 331 

us. Whatever is done for beauty in America, must, 
it seems, at least for a long time to come, be done 
by private munificence. If we are to have noble 
arches, or gateways, or buildings, or monuments of 
any description, if our cities are to have other at- 
tractions than large hotels, it is evident our rich 
men must be induced to use for this purpose the 
wealth which it seems often to puzzle them to 
spend. Such works would be a far more striking 
evidence of the owner's opulence than any private 
palace, would give his name a perpetuity which 
can never be got from a private house, and would 
rid him completely from the imputation of selfish- 
ness. For our experience with regard to great 
houses, hitherto, is that the children of the men 
who cause them to be built rarely wish to live in 
them, and often have not the means to do so. Such 
buildings become after their death either hotels or 
some kind of charitable institutions. They are in 
no sense memorials in men's minds of anything 
but somebody's folly or extravagance. All they 
say to coming generations, if they are not pulled 
down, is that So-and-so made a fortune. 

In erecting public monuments a rich man would 
have the great advantage of doing what he pleased. 
If the thing were more than a building, were, for 
instance, an arch or a fountain, all he would have 
to get from the public would be permission to 



332 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS 

build, which would be seldom difficult. To obtain 
from a popular government large expenditure of 
money in a way which artists would approve, es- 
pecially a government resting on a public as little 
instructed in art matters as ours, is likely to be for 
a long time to come at least almost an impossibil- 
ity. Men in office are rarely experts in such mat- 
ters, and if thoroughly honest, are apt to plume 
themselves on their economy and rigid devotion to 
utility, rather than on any regard for beauty. The 
banker in New York who refused, some time ago, 
to give in aid of an Academy of Design, money 
which might be used, he said, in setting " a young 
man up in the grocery business," fairly represented 
the state of mind of any official class which we 
are likely to have for a good while. Our reliance 
for the ornamentation of the new world must there- 
fore be mainly on our rich men. They can choose 
their subject and their architect, without let or 
hindrance, and they have thus far shown them- 
selves fully alive to the value of professional ad- 
vice and criticism. They have, in fact, before 
them a wonderful opportunity, of which we trust 
the next generation at least will avail itself, without 
servile imitation of a society which is passing away 
in the places in which history produced it. 



